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Full-Text Articles in Communications Law
Valuing Spectrum Allocations, Thomas W. Hazlett, Michael Honig
Valuing Spectrum Allocations, Thomas W. Hazlett, Michael Honig
Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review
Observing trends in which Wi-Fi and Bluetooth have become widely popular, some argue that unlicensed allocations hosting such wireless technologies are increasingly valuable and that administrative spectrum allocations should shift accordingly. We challenge that policy conclusion. A core issue is that the social value of a given spectrum allocation is widely assumed to equal the gains of the applications it is likely to host. This thinking is faulty, as vividly seen in what we deem the Broadcast TV Spectrum Valuation Fallacy – the idea that because wireless video, or broadcast network programs are popular, TV channels are efficiently defined. This …
Product Life Cycle Theory And The Maturation Of The Internet, Christopher S. Yoo
Product Life Cycle Theory And The Maturation Of The Internet, Christopher S. Yoo
All Faculty Scholarship
Much of the recent debate over Internet policy has focused on the permissibility of business practices that are becoming increasingly common, such as new forms of network management, prioritization, pricing, and strategic partnerships. This Essay analyzes these developments through the lens of the management literature on the product life cycle, dominant designs, technological trajectories and design hierarchies, and the role of complementary assets in determining industry structure. This analysis suggests that many of these business practices may represent nothing more than a reflection of how the nature of competition changes as industries mature. This in turn suggests that network neutrality …
Toward A Unified Theory Of Access To Local Telephone Systems, Daniel F. Spulber, Christopher S. Yoo
Toward A Unified Theory Of Access To Local Telephone Systems, Daniel F. Spulber, Christopher S. Yoo
All Faculty Scholarship
One of the most distinctive developments in telecommunications policy over the past few decades has been the increasingly broad array of access requirements regulatory authorities have imposed on local telephone providers. In so doing, policymakers did not fully consider whether the justifications for regulating telecommunications remained valid. They also allowed each access regime to be governed by its own pricing methodology and set access prices in a way that treated each network component as if it existed in isolation. The result was a regulatory regime that was internally inconsistent, vulnerable to regulatory arbitrage, and unable to capture the interactions among …
Rethinking Broadband Internet Access, Daniel F. Spulber, Christopher S. Yoo
Rethinking Broadband Internet Access, Daniel F. Spulber, Christopher S. Yoo
All Faculty Scholarship
The emergence of broadband Internet technologies, such as cable modem and digital subscriber line (DSL) systems, has reopened debates over how the Internet should be regulated. Advocates of network neutrality and open access to cable modem systems have proposed extending the regulatory regime developed to govern conventional telephone and narrowband Internet service to broadband. A critical analysis of the rationales traditionally invoked to justify the regulation of telecommunications networks--such as natural monopoly, network economic effects, vertical exclusion, and the dangers of ruinous competition--reveals that those rationales depend on empirical and theoretical preconditions that do not apply to broadband. In addition, …