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Full-Text Articles in Consumer Protection Law
Advancing Consumer Interests Through Ubiquitous Broadband: The Need For A New Spectrum, Meredith Attwell Baker
Advancing Consumer Interests Through Ubiquitous Broadband: The Need For A New Spectrum, Meredith Attwell Baker
Federal Communications Law Journal
Comprehensive and long-term spectrum reform can play a critical role in the FCC's development of a National Broadband Plan and in its consideration of Open Internet rules. More efficient and intensive use of the nation's spectrum resources would help provide a path to greater broadband deployment, competition and innovation for all consumers. Wireless and mobile technologies hold great promise to offer consumers new services to complement, extend, or even replace existing broadband offerings. A comprehensive review of the nation's spectrum policy is, therefore, necessary to ensure that wireless and mobile broadband services are not hamstrung by outdated rules or command-and-control …
Universal Service In The United States: A Focus On Mobile Communications, Steven G. Parsons, James Bixby
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 …