Tradable universal service obligations

This paper proposes a novel policy to motivate private-sector operators of basic infrastructure to expand infrastructure into previously unserved regions. It is particularly useful when resources are transferred to the private sector, as occurs during the privatisation of a state-owned telecommunications carrier, the introduction of competition, the release of spectrum, or the allocation of cash subsidies for this purpose. Firms receive tradable universal service obligations in the form of milestones that must be met, and commitments to meet specific deadlines. By exchanging its commitments, a firm can increase or decrease the rate at which it must expand infrastructure. By exchanging milestones, a firm can change where it must expand infrastructure. Making milestones and commitments independent and fully tradable allows each firm to develop the most cost effective business strategy possible, and to adapt that strategy as technology and demand evolve over time. The exchange of milestones and commitments does not diminish the obligations that must be met by industry as a whole, insuring the timely expansion of infrastructure. This paper focuses on telecommunications, but the approach is also applicable to other forms of infrastructure, such as electric power.     

Auctions for universal service obligations

This paper proposes the use of auctions for determining which carriers should undertake a universal service obligation, and what compensation they should receive for performing this function. From the regulator's perspective the auction would reveal carriers’ valuations of the USO, determine the number of USO providers endogenously, and provide an alternative to traditional cost-of-service regulation. Since bidding is a voluntary action by the firms, auctions would serve also to discipline the regulator. While auctions are compatible with competitive local service markets, they can also serve as a transition to competitive markets.     

Efficiency of uniform pricing in universal service obligations

We provide an efficiency justification for the imposition of the uniform pricing constraint in universal service obligations (USO), where USO are defined as a set of constraints imposed on firms belonging to a network industry. In addition to the uniform pricing (UP) constraint, which is an obligation to serve all consumers at an identical price, constraints considered are the coverage constraint (CC), which is an obligation imposed on one of the firms to serve a given segment of the market, and the license constraint (LC), which is a minimum or a maximum coverage restriction that is imposed on entrants. We show that adding the UP constraint to both a CC and a LC leads to an increase in welfare. Our contribution comes from the full recognition of the role of a LC in well-designed USO and we illustrate this role with the particular case of linear demand.     

An alternative approach to allocate universal service obligations

In a liberalized telecommunications market universal service is considered to be essential for social life of each member of society. However, to avoid discrimination the universal service provider has to be compensated for universal service costs. Instead of calculating universal service costs directly, someone may take auctions as an alternative approach to allocate universal service obligations. In this case the compensation as well as the universal service provider is implicitly determined by the bids of the participants of the auction. In this paper we scrutinize whether this is an appropriate approach.     

Regulating a monopoly with universal service obligations: The role of flexible tariff schemes

This paper's purpose is to study the problem of a utility monopoly's regulator, which has a universal service goal that is binding, in the sense that there is no two-part tariff that can induce efficient consumption, self-finance the firm, and guarantee universal access at the same time.     

Disconnecting: Understanding decline in universal service

At a time when choices for voice service and funding for universal service were growing, the United States experienced an unprecedented drop in household telephone penetration. Universal service in voice telephony is generally taken for granted in the United States. However, recent data from the FCC shows a significant decline in the number of U.S. households that have a telephone of any kind (including mobile), from a peak in telephone penetration of 95.5% in March 2003 down to 92.9% in November 2005. This decline is both statistically significant and meaningful, as approximately 2.6% of U.S. households could not easily reach 911 for emergencies. This study uses regression analysis of state-level data to determine what drove this decline in universal service. The results demonstrate that the recent decline in universal service in the U.S. is driven by an increase in black population, inadequate consumer protection laws, and increases in wireless telephones per capita. Lifeline effectiveness does not appear to mitigate the decline in penetration, while Link-Up effectiveness may have a limited effect.     

Broadband and universal service

Section 254(b)(3) of the 1996 Telecommunications Act established the objective that residents of rural areas should have access to advanced telecommunications and information services comparable to services in urban areas. Pursuant to the passage of the Act, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) established a new universal fund that provides explicit support to high-cost rural areas. This paper addresses the question of whether people in rural areas have similar access due to the support provided through the Commission's new high-cost fund. This paper focuses on the telephone platform because cable companies often do not serve rural areas due to the high cost of service, and because there is no mechanism for the federal or state government to subsidize the provision of advanced telecommunications services via cable. The Act's objectives are apparently not being met in rural areas served by large companies since people living in these areas are much less likely to have qualified lines that could be used to access advanced telecommunications services. On the other hand, small companies are much closer to satisfying the statutory requirement as a result of the implicit support received through cost sharing.     

Mapping the field: Retrospective of the federal universal service programs

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 (1996 Act) established the framework for four federal universal service programs: the High-Cost program, the Low-Income program, the Schools and Libraries (E-rate) program, and the Rural Health Care program. During the past 15 years, these programs have been examined from a number of perspectives in an attempt to measure their efficiency and effectiveness, including the funding mechanisms that support them. The Federal Communications Commission is in the process of restructuring the universal service programs to move support to broadband-based technologies. This is an opportune time to examine what is known about whether these programs have met the universal service objectives of the 1996 Act and have efficiently and effectively used universal service funding. To that end, this article surveys both oversight reports by federal government agencies and academic research literature drawn from a variety of sources to identify areas of concern regarding the mission, implementation, and impact of the federal universal service programs and support mechanisms. The article also includes research findings on how the economic incentives created by the federal universal service programs affect corporate investment and deployment decisions and consumer service and technology adoption decisions.     

Sovereignty and universal service: sacred cows in the satellite industry

Globalisation strikes at the cornerstone of telecom policy — i.e., the sovereign right of every country to license the provision and use of telecoms within its borders. Sovereignty has historically been protected by means of a licence, the fees, conditions and procedures for which vary significantly around the world. In the satellite industry, those countries with the lowest teledensities tend to have the highest licence fees. Although there is a trend towards lower licence fees for subscribers, some regulators are just shifting the burden to service providers or the satellite operators. The European Commission and the European Conference of Post and Telecom Administrations (CEPT) have taken steps towards greater harmonisation of licensing conditions, one of which is universal service obligations (USOs). More than half of all countries have USOs which originated in the days of monopoly. With growing competition globally, assumptions about USOs need to be challenged. Regulators should refocus their energies from imposing tough conditions on the satellite industry to removing regulatory roadblocks.     

Estimating the impact of low-income universal service programs

This policy study uses U.S. Census microdata to evaluate how subsidies for universal telephone service vary in their impact across low-income racial groups, gender, age, and home ownership. Our demand specification includes both the subsidized monthly price (Lifeline program) and the subsidized initial connection price (Linkup program) for local telephone service. Our quasi-maximum likelihood estimation controls for location differences and instruments for price endogeneity. The microdata allow us to estimate the effects of demographics on both elasticities of telephone penetration and the level of telephone penetration. Based on our preferred estimates, the subsidy programs increased aggregate penetration by 6.1% for households below the poverty line. Our results suggest that automatic enrollment programs are important and that Linkup is more cost-effective than Lifeline, which calls into question a recent FCC (2012) decision to reduce Linkup subsidies in favor of Lifeline. Our study can inform the evaluation of similar universal service policies for Internet access.     

Regional universal telecommunication service provisions in the US: Efficiency versus penetration

Universal service, the long time goal of telecommunications regulation, is under new scrutiny by stakeholders. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 eliminated the barriers to competition implemented in the transitional Modified Final Judgment of 1984. The FCC is now setting up a new universal service plan, which extends its scope to schools, libraries and health care providers. At the same time, however, concerns about the effectiveness of the universal service are increasing. This article reports on a study which first investigates the growth patterns in the number of house-holds by income groups in states, and then examines the effectiveness and efficiency of the universal service policy on low-income households at the state level.     

Introducing new computer-based systems into Zenbank

Here the author examines the development and implementation of a computer-based system within a financial services organization. It highlights emerging paradoxes within the developments of systems design which utilise quality management methodologies to support IT intensive business processes.     

A dynamic universal service for a heterogenous European Union

The structure of the European Union is characterized by some member states that show considerable deficits in infrastructure development. On the other side, there are countries that have reached a level of network and service quality that allows them to compete in the international race for predominance in the Information Society. Universal service provisions of the EU do not take account of this fact but treat all member states under one common set of rules. Furthermore, the universal service concept of the EU is too static for the technological dynamics of the telecommunications and information markets. The universal service concept introduced in this article tries to give suggestions on how these shortcomings could be overcome.     

Introducing cable television into Hong Kong : Political and economic implications

This paper seeks to evaluate and predict the impact of the introduction of cable television into Hong Kong, a densely populated and highly dynamic Asian metropolis currently under British administration. The discussion will focus on how the coming of cable communication will impact on the ownership and economic structure of the broadcasting industry, with particular reference to international participation; public policy issues concerning economic structure and programming of the cable system; and the implications for the period of Hong Kong's political transition from the UK to China.     

The persistence of broadband user behavior: Implications for universal service and competition policy

In several markets, firms compete not for consumer expenditure but consumer attention. We examine user priorities over the allocation of their time, and interpret that behavior in light of policy discussions over universal service, data caps, and related policy topics, such as merger analysis. Specifically, we use extensive microdata on user online choice to characterize the demand for the services offered online, which drives a household's supply of attention. Our data cover a period of time that saw the introduction of many new and notable sites and new devices on which to access them. In our analysis, we assess “how” households supply their attention along various dimensions, such as their concentration of attention across the universe of sites and the amount of attention expenditure per domain visit. Remarkably, we find no change in “how” households allocated their attention despite drastically changing where they allocated it. Moreover, conditional on total attention expenditure, demographics entirely fail to predict our key measures of attention allocation decisions. We highlight several important implications, for policy and beyond, stemming from the persistence and demographic orthogonality of our novel attention measures.     

Retaining telecommunication services when universal service is defined by functionality: Japanese consumers' willingness-to-pay

This study uses contingent valuation to measure Japanese customers' willingness-to-pay to maintain combinations of five telecommunication services that are considered substitutes if universal service is defined on the basis of functionality. The analysis revealed the following results. First, consumers are more willing to pay to retain voice communication services than data transmission services. Second, customers accept Internet Protocol telephony as a substitute for plain old telephone service (POTS) as a universal service, and they are willing to pay much more than Japan's current Universal Service Fund charge. Third, even when mobile phone service (MOB) is available, consumers will pay to retain fixed-line voice services. Finally, consumers have an equal desire to keep fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) and fixed-line voice services, but it is less than the demand for MOB. Thus, under the present definition of POTS as a universal service, FTTH could be considered as a basic telecommunication service.     

Uncertainty of public pay phone in Thailand: Implications for the universal service obligation

Public pay telephones are fast becoming technological dinosaurs headed quickly toward extinction. In Thailand, however, the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) has included the public pay phone as part of the Universal Service Obligation (USO) to ensure that all people in the country have reasonable access to a standard telephone service on request, and that payphones are accessible to all people on an equitable basis, wherever they live or carry on business. In spite of this, however, public pay phones and their revenue are also sharply declining due to the ever increasing encroachment of mobile phone technology. The researcher therefore undertook a study to empirically examine the key determinant factors for individual consumers using public payphones. A discrete choice model is employed together with the analysis of data from a 2011 national survey commissioned by the NBTC. Payphone usage is determined by the ownership of fixed phones, mobile phones and income which all play an important role with payphone being a necessary service for low-income people. Hence, NBTC should continue support through the USO fund and reassess the areas and groups of people who need this service in order to ensure that the USO policy is effectively and beneficially implemented.     

服装工艺课程引入Workshop模式的教学研究

随着艺术创新和艺术创作理念的提升,对艺术教育提出了更高要求。本文分析了Workshop模式在国内外艺术教育领域中应用,研究现有服装工艺教学中所存在的问题,探讨将Workshop模式引入服装工艺教学的方式与意义。结论得出有针对性的引入Workshop模式将有助于提高教学质量,促进学生就业。     

Customer segments as moving targets: Integrating customer value dynamism into segment instability logic

Segmentation is a mature concept in marketing strategy that continues to receive significant attention from managers and scholars alike. The key goal in segmentation is identifying and reaching profitable segments with products and services that meet the common needs of these customers. However, a fundamental issue needing rigorous attention is that customers' needs are dynamic and can induce segment instability. The purpose of this paper is to draw focus to segment instability in business-to-business markets by conceptually exploring its theoretical underpinnings and integrating related theory on customer value change to propose an agenda for future research.