Antitrust and Trade Regulation Commons^™

Universal Service In The United States: A Focus On Mobile Communications, Steven G. Parsons, James Bixby

Federal Communications Law Journal

The concept of universal service, providing affordable telecommunications to all citizens, has a long and changing history in the United States. Prior to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, efforts to achieve universal service were largely based on a complex web of implicit subsidies to basic landline local exchange residential service. The Act expanded and codified the concept of universal service and made the subsidies largely explicit. This Article evaluates the possible economic rationales for subsidizing voice communications and find them lacking. This Article argues that the weak rationale for subsidizing basic voice communications makes it critical that U.S. universal-service policy …

Creating Effective Broadband Network Regulation, Daniel L. Brenner

Federal Communications Law Journal

The Internet is central to the business and pastimes of Americans. Calls for increased regulation are ongoing, inevitable, and often justified. But calls for "network neutrality" or "nondiscrimination" assume with little hesitation federal agency competence to give predictable and accurate meaning to these terms and create regulations to implement them. This Article's chief contribution to Internet policy debate is to focus attention on the likelihood of successful FCC Internet regulation-a key assumption of some advocates.

The Article analyzes three characteristics that hobble the FCC, which is the likeliest federal agency to provide prescriptive rules. First, the record for the agency …