Local Telephone Competition

Local telephone competition : hearing before the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, United States Senate, One Hundred Seventh Congress, first session, June 19, 2001.

The third in a series of reports about local telephone service in the U.S. that includes comprehensive info. about subscribership to interconnected Voice over Internet Protocol (¿interconnected VoIP¿) service as well as comprehensive info. about the more traditional telephone service lines. The report summarizes data collected by the FCC Form 477 as of December 31, 2009. The report includes certain ZIP Code-based info. in the report. At present, there is no Form 477 requirement to report any telephone service info. at the census tract level of detail. The report also updates summary statistics for the mobile telephony subscribership info. collected by Form 477.5. Charts and tables. This is a print on demand edition of an important publication.

First published in 1997. While local telephone companies still maintain their monopolistic position, rapid technological advance in telecommunications is destroying the established market structure in the local telephone industry. The U.S. Telecommunications Act of 1996 aimed at eliminating any legal barrier which has suppressed technically feasible local competition. This study attempts to provide pro-competitive evidence on the technological or cost structure of the U.S. local telephone industry. In particular, the study presents strong evidence against cost subadditivity of local telephone companies and shows that local telephone companies have been isolated from the disciplinary effects of competition in comparison with their competitive counterparts. The study not only has policy implications for entry and competition in local telephone markets, but also provides a new approach to the measurement of embodied technical change.