The rapid pace of technological change is placing the world's telephone companies in a very difficult position. Fiber optics cables, wireless telephones, digital signal compression, and sophisticated new switching equipment are lowering the cost of providing service and opening the gates to new competition. At the same time, these new technologies are providing the telephone companies with a wide array of new market opportunities. Unfortunately, their status as regulated carriers makes it difficult to exploit these new opportunities and to fend off competitive assaults on their traditional telephone business. As long as they are regulated, they can be accused of using their monopoly services to cross-subsidize new competitive ventures. But partial deregulation and open entry would be a catastrophe for them unless they were allowed to revise their rate structure. There is a widespread misconception that the U.S. telecommunications industry has been " deregulated" and that Canadian authorities are following the U.S. lead. In fact, most services remain regulated, even though some markets, such as long-distance services, equipment sales and rentals, and local services, have been opened up. This book reviews the recent changes in the structure of U.S. and Canadian telecommunications industries and the changes in regulatory policy on both sides of the border. The authors analyze the effects of these changes in regulation on telephone rates in both the local and long-distance markets with particular emphasis on the impacts of regulatory reforms and competition on long-distance rates. They use their results to suggest how regulation should be structured to allow competition to replacemonopoly on the road to the information superhighway. The authors contend that for decades misguided regulation of the telephone sector in both Canada and the U.S. denied consumers the benefits of competition, distorted local and long-distance telephone rates, and blocked entry of new carriers and new technologies. They warn that the continued regulation of the telecommunications industry could be responsible for slowing the transition from " plain old telephone service" to a telecommunications marketplace that offers a wide variety of services. They conclude by outlining the choices open to policymakers and calling for liberalized competition all along the information superhighway.

In recent years, liberalization, privatization and deregulation have become commonplace in sectors once dominated by government-owned monopolies. In telecommunications, for example, during the 1990s, more than 129 countries established independent regulatory agencies and more than 100 countries privatized the state-owned telecom operator. Why did so many countries liberalize in such a short period of time? For example, why did both Denmark and Burundi, nations different along so many relevant dimensions, liberalize their telecom sectors around the same time? Kirsten L. Rodine-Hardy argues that international organizations - not national governments or market forces - are the primary drivers of policy convergence in the important arena of telecommunications regulation: they create and shape preferences for reform and provide forums for expert discussions and the emergence of policy standards. Yet she also shows that international convergence leaves room for substantial variation among countries, using both econometric analysis and controlled case comparisons of eight European countries.

"The U.S. telecommunications industry has undergone dramatic changes in recent years that have touched almost every American home and business. The average American can dial almost anywhere in the world directly, store and forward a message, or transmit a fax in less than a minute; often for less than the real cost of a 500-mile telephone call tweny-five years ago. The combination of telecommunications breakthroughs, competition among new and old carriers, and the AT&T breakup has transformed the telephone industry and provided customers with a new array of equipment and services. Robert W. Crandall examines the effects of the AT&T breakup and weighs the costs and benefits to the residential and business consumer. On balance, he finds that the efficiency gains from opening up the telephone industry have more than offset the possible efficiency losses, which may be caused by the sacrifice of economies of scale and scope or the absence of fully compatible equipment and services. The replacement of regulation with competition has led to greater productivity in the telephone industry, a more efficient rate structure, and lower equipment prices. Crandall traces the telecommunications evolution from its early beginnings as pairs of copper wires up through the historic 1982 decision to divest. He investigates the impact of technological changes, competition, and the advent of divestiture on the quality of service, local and interexchange service rates, productive efficiency, and income distribution. He also focuses on problems that linger after the breakup in the increasingly competitive but highly regulated sector. "

The 21st century has marked the arrival of new digital technologies that transform the way enterprises operate and people live their lives. From social media sites and smartphone technology to video streaming and cloud computing, there has been a bevy of new applications that are impacting society and business seemingly on a daily basis. Considering technology and networking is a constantly changing field, some of its aspects need to be changed to conform to newly set trends. Even though prior network management frameworks have proved efficient in the past years, change is inevitable. More and more people use the internet and more scalable network management architecture needs to be developed. In that respect, the telecommunication industry has seen tremendous growth accompanied by various challenges. Ideally, the expectations of all these include the quality of service and customer services as well as mitigating any threats that are affecting the service providers. With many opportunities being granted, telecommunication has a wide range of emerging content. For instance, there is the exponential growth of the Internet of Things devices and 5G network data, and the acceleration of cloud-based network adoption. More so, there are smart cities, mobile broadband, massive connectivity, artificial intelligence, and automation. Moving on to trends in big data, the development of the Internet of Things has brought into the picture countless innovative sources of big data. Cloud computing has served as one of the biggest trends in the last ten years and fog computing exhibits greater prospects. Cloud computing is changing the way we access applications and hardware as well as the business and healthcare environments. Even though there is presently a considerable amount of work underway at cloud data centers, the fog computing trend is bound to change things. Many of the important and disruptive IoT trends are taking place in the industrial setting in terms of transport, manufacturing, and utilities. In terms of smart living, turning regular homes into smart homes is a developing trend that is progressively getting bigger every single day. Automation and pervasive networks emerge from the combination of virtualization, IoT, densification, and 5G to replace today's atomistic networks. All of these trends are coined from the dynamism that is witnessed in computerized systems that have the unending need to offer improved and more efficient services. In this book, the author has discussed the future roadmap of telecommunications and the major disruptions that will drive the most change in this industry. The focus of this book concerns the cloud, fog and edge computing with their benefits, and challenges.

This book is designed to provide mail centre managers, their supervisors, and an organisation's security personnel a framework for understanding and mitigating risks posed to the organisation by the mail and packages it receives and delivers on a daily basis. A wide range of potential threats can be introduced into an organisation by way of the mail centre. Threats that involve chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or explosive substances are both dangerous and disruptive. Some threats, such as white powder hoaxes and threatening letters, are merely designed to disrupt the activities of an organisation or to express dissatisfaction with a particular individual or policy. The mail centre screening and handling processes must be able to identify threats and hoaxes and eliminate or mitigate the risk they pose to the organisation, its employees, and daily operations. This book provides an introduction to and understanding of the most efficient and effective processes and procedures to handle and screen mail entering an organisation's mail processing facilities.

This book explains the history, current situation, market size and technological level of China's telecommunication industry in detail. It also provides an introduction to the main operators in China and their respective market shares and network technologies. Information about major equipment manufacturing enterprises and their major products is also provided, and their competitive strengths are analyzed. Finally, the book describes the evolution of China's telecommunication regulatory regime, the changes in telecommunication policies and the reform of regulatory practices. The impact of these reform measures is then briefly evaluated.

The telephone looms large in our lives, as ever present in modern societies as cars and television. Claude Fischer presents the first social history of this vital but little-studied technology - how we encountered, tested, and ultimately embraced it with enthusiasm. Using telephone ads, oral histories, telephone industry correspondence, and statistical data, Fischer's work is a colorful exploration of how, when, and why Americans started communicating in this radically new manner. Studying three California communities, Fischer uncovers how the telephone became integrated into the private worlds and community activities of average Americans in the first decades of this century. Women were especially avid in their use, a phenomenon which the industry first vigorously discouraged and then later wholeheartedly promoted. Again and again Fischer finds that the telephone supported a wide-ranging network of social relations and played a crucial role in community life, especially for women, from organizing children's relationships and church activities to alleviating the loneliness and boredom of rural life. Deftly written and meticulously researched, "America Calling" adds an important new chapter to the social history of our nation and illuminates a fundamental aspect of cultural modernism that is integral to contemporary life.

Congress designed the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to be a self-supporting government agency. Since 1971, the agency has not relied upon annual appropriations to cover its operating costs. Rather, USPS has funded its operations mostly through the sales of postage and postal products and services. Since FY2007, however, the agency has run more than $40 billion in deficits and has reached its statutory borrowing limit. The agency does receive an annual appropriation of approximately $90 million per year, which amounts to about 0.1% of USPSs $65 billion operating budget. USPSs troubled financial condition has raised concerns about the viability of the agency. Many postal reform bills have been introduced in the 113th and 112th Congresses. These bills have proposed altering many aspects of postal operations, from raising the rates mailers pay to reducing the days of delivery and closing USPS post offices and mail sorting facilities. This book provides background information on the responsibilities, financial challenges and workforce issues facing the U.S. Postal Service (USPS). Additionally, it covers the current strategies and initiatives under development by the USPS and discusses further options for postal reforms.

Model your company's future on the success of tech's quiet giant BusinessWeek once listed Chinese tech firm Huawei as one of the ten most influential companies on the planet, and Time placed its founder Ren Zhengfei in the top 100 most influential men in the world. Once considered an insignificant upstart bound for failure like so many other early tech companies, Huawei is now a $62 billion company employing 190,000 people worldwide. Huawei's upward trajectory is the classic story of a company that beat all the odds. Founded in 1987 with 20,000 RMB, Huawei took on all the IT powerhouses during times of major market upheaval and has come out on top-all due to the clarity of vision, powerful sense of purpose, and sheer work ethic of its founder. The Huawei Way provides practical lessons on how Ren Zhengfei led his company to a level of success no one in the world predicted. As telecom's old greats like Motorola, Nokia, and Siemens continue to struggle from the effects of recession, Huawei continues to grow because it never stops innovating. Its success is self-driven because the company, reflecting is its founder, maintains a relentless dedication R while other companies, fueled by fear, are scaling down R&D to save money, Huawei is ramping it up. And it's paying off big time. Both entertaining and instructive, The Huawei Way traces the rise of one of today's greatest tech companies to provide valuable business and management lessons anyone can apply to any company, in any industry.

"The twenty-first-century telecommunications landscape is radically different from the one that prevailed as recently as the last decade of the twentieth century. Robert Litan and Hal Singer argue that given the speed of innovation in this sector, the Federal Communications Commission's outdated policies and rules are inhibiting investment in the telecom industry, specifically in fast broadband networks. This pithy handbook presents the kind of fundamental rethinking needed to bring communications policy in line with technological advances. Fast broadband has huge societal benefits, enabling all kinds of applications in telemedicine, entertainment, retailing, education, and energy that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. Those benefits would be even greater if the FCC adopted policies that encouraged more broadband providers, especially wireless providers, to make their services available in the roughly half of the country where consumers currently have no choice in wireline providers offering download speeds that satisfy the FCC's current standards. The authors' recommendations include allowing broadband providers to charge for premium delivery services; embracing a rule-of-reason approach to all matters involving vertical arrangements; stripping the FCC of its merger review authority because both the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department have the authority to stop anticompetitive mergers; eliminating the FCC's ability to condition spectrum purchases on the identity, business plans, or spectrum holdings of a bidder; and freeing telephone companies from outdated regulations that require them to maintain both a legacy copper network and a modem IP network. These changes and others advanced in this book would greatly enhance consumer welfare with respect to telecommunications services and the applications built around them. "

Outside the Box presents an in-depth study of media representation of the 1997 United Parcel Service (UPS) workers' strike. Deepa Kumar delineates the history of the strike, how it coincided with the rise of globalization, and how the mainstream media were pressured to incorporate pro-labor arguments that challenged the dominant logic of neoliberalism. Drawing on a textual analysis of over five hundred news reports, Kumar argues that media reform is more complicated than is suggested by liberal media theorists. She makes a case for a dialectical understanding, developing a "dominance/resistance model" for media analysis.

Changing a consumer's telephone service provider without his/her knowledge or consent is known as 'slamming'. This unauthorised change can occur for several reasons ranging from computer or human error to unscrupulous or illegal marketing practices. Regardless of the reason, slamming has a negative impact on both consumers and suppliers of telecommunications services. Despite existing regulations to prevent such practices and the overall condemnation of such activities, slamming is occurring with increasing frequency. According to data released by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) 3,216 slamming complaints were filed in the first half of 2003. The issue of slamming is expected to continue as competition in the provision of intrastate long distance and local telecommunications services becomes more widespread. A significant level of consumer complaints, coupled with the potential for further abuses in an increasingly competitive market place, have prompted action to examine and strengthen deterrents to this practice. The FCC has been actively enforcing existing rules and continues to address outstanding slamming issues. The FCC, in a series of rulemakings, adopted rules that strengthen deterrents to slamming in compliance with provisions contained in the 1996 Telecommunications Act (P.L.104-104). All of these rules are now in effect. Under these revised rules, states are given the option of processing slamming complaints, and numerous states have chosen to do so. The telecommunications industry has condemned intentional slamming and is also taking steps to eliminate the practice. This new book examines this new rip-off practice.

Over the last several years, the value of stocks in both the airline and the telecommunications industries have dropped catastrophically. Since these industries were among the most important -and most visible -to have been unleashed from regulation in recent decades (albeit in widely differing degree), their difficulties have raised the question of whether their deregulation should be reconsidered or even reversed. Alfred E. Kahn, one of the foremost authorities on deregulation, argues in this book that every passing year demonstrates the superiority of the road chosen for the airlines. He contrasts the financial meltdowns of both the airline and telecommunications industries with others taking place at the same time, particularly in technology-related stocks and ""dot.coms,"" pointing out that these sectors were also relatively free of direct economic regulation. Their experience provides a useful counter to the natural tendency to blame all the woes of aviation and telecommunications on government policy. This book provides a valuable and accessible guide to unraveling the complex world of network deregulation. It will serve as a reference point for practioners and policymakers, as well as an important introduction for the general public.

The US postal service has moved from a largely ignored agency of the government to the frontline troops in the battle with terrorists sending anthrax and other unforeseen threats. This much misunderstood and maligned government agency manages to deliver millions of letters and packages each day through rain, snow and every imaginable kind of weather condition to every nook in the United States. This new book offers in-depth information on the background and the current issues of the Postal Service.

The role of the telegraph operator in the mid-nineteenth century was like that of today's software programmer/analyst, according to independent scholar Tom Jepsen, who notes that in the "cyberspace" of long ago, male operators were often surprised to learn that the "first-class man" on the other end of the wire was a woman. Like the computer, the telegraph caused a technological revolution. The telegraph soon worked synergistically with the era's other mass-scale technology, the railroad, to share facilities as well as provide communications to help trains run on time. The strategic nature of the telegraph in the Civil War opened opportunities for women, but tension arose as men began to return from military service. However, women telegraphers did not affect male employment or wage levels. Women kept their jobs after the war with support from industry--Western Union in particular--and because they defended and justified their role. "Although women were predominantly employed in lower-paying positions and in rural offices, women who persisted and made a career of the profession could work up to managerial or senior technical positions that, except for wage discrimination, were identical to those of their male counterparts," writes Jepsen. "Telegraphy as an occupation became gendered, in the sense that we understand today, only after the introduction of the teletype and the creation of a separate role for women teletype operators." My Sisters Telegraphic is a fresh introduction to this pivotal communications technology and its unsung women workers, long neglected by labor and social historians.

In virtually every country, the price of residential access to the telephone network is kept low and cross-subsidized by business services, long distance calling, and various other telephone services. This pricing practice is widely defended as necessary to promote "universal service," but Crandall and Waverman show that it has little effect on telephone subscriptions while it has major harmful effects on the value of all telephone service. The higher prices for long distance calls reduce calling, shift the burden of paying for the network to those whose social networks are widely dispersed. Therefore, many poor and rural households--the intended beneficiaries of the pricing strategy--are forced to pay far more for telephone service than they would if prices reflected the cost of service. Despite these burdens, Congress has extended the subsidies to advanced services for schools, libraries, and rural health facilities. Crandall and Waverman show that other regulated utilities are not burdened with similarly inefficient cross-subsidy schemes, yet universality of water, natural gas, and electricity service is achieved. As local telephone service competition develops in the wake of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, the universal-service subsidy system will have to change. Subsidies will have to be paid from taxes on telecom services and paid directly to carriers or subscribers. Crandall and Waverman show that an intrastate tax designed to pay for each state's subsidized subscriptions is far less costly to the economy than an interstate tax. Robert W. Crandall is a senior fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution. Leonard Waverman is a visiting professor at the London Business School, on leave from the University of Toronto. They are coauthors of Talk Is Cheap: The Promise of Regulatory Reform in North American Telecommunications (Brookings, 1995).

The passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 inaugurated a new and highly volatile era in telecommunications. The first major overhaul of U.S. communications law since 1934--when no one had a television set, a cordless phone, or a computer--the Act was spurred into being by broad shifts in technology use. Equally important, this book shows, the new law reflects important changes in our notions of the purpose of communications regulation and how it should be deployed. Focusing on the evolution of the concept of the public interest, Aufderheide examines how and why the legislation was developed, provides a thematic analysis of the Act itself, and charts its intended and unintended effects in business and policy. An abridged version of the Act is included, as are the Supreme Court decision that struck down one of its clauses, the Communications Decency Act, and a variety of pertinent speeches and policy arguments. Readers are also guided to a range of organizations and websites that offer legal updates and policy information. Finalist, McGannon Center Award for Social and Ethical Relevance in Communication Policy Research

This collection presents rare documents relating to the development of various forms of communication across Africa by the British, as part of their economic investment in Africa. The first four volumes focus on the continents railway system, while the final volume considers the construction of Africa's road and river networks.

Nearly half a century ago, the economic historian Harold Innis pointed out that the geographical limits of empires were determined by communications and that, historically, advances in the technologies of transport and communications have enabled empires to grow. This power of communications was demonstrated when Japanese Emperor Hirohito's radio speech announcing Japan's surrender and the dissolution of its empire was broadcast simultaneously throughout not only the Japanese home islands but also all the territories under its control over the telecommunications system that had, in part, made that empire possible.

In the extension of the Japanese empire in the 1930s and 1940s, technology, geo-strategy, and institutions were closely intertwined in empire building. The central argument of this study of the development of a communications network linking the far-flung parts of the Japanese imperium is that modern telecommunications not only served to connect these territories but, more important, made it possible for the Japanese to envision an integrated empire in Asia. Even as the imperial communications network served to foster integration and strengthened Japanese leadership and control, its creation and operation exacerbated long-standing tensions and created new conflicts within the government, the military, and society in general.

Will the rush of the information super-highway leave U.S. telecommunication policy in the dust - or will our policy keep pace with and effectively regulate the future of telecommunication? Former FCC Bureau Chief Gerald Brock argues that the existing agencies with overlapping responsibilities can set policies that will wisely steer the telecommunication industry through the high-speed changes just around the corner. Brock develops a new theory of decentralized public decision-making and uses it to clarify the dramatic changes that have transformed the industry from a heavily regulated monopoly to a set of market-oriented finds. In a uniquely authoritative, up-to-date history of telecommunication policy - informed in part by his firsthand experience - the author looks at decisions made by the FCC, state regulatory agencies, the Department of Justice, Congress, and federal courts. He demonstrates how the decentralized decision-making process - whose apparent element of chaos has so often invited criticism - has actually made the United States a world leader in reforming telecommunication policy. Brock traces the flow of information through the bureaucratic web that regulated the divestiture and earlier transitions, such as the first monopoly-eroding attachment of terminal equipment and the development of private microwave systems. Throughout his analysis, Brock convincingly shows that decentralized policymaking generates rational outcomes consistent with public preferences. Replete with details on the role of subsidies in influencing policy, and including in-depth analysis of events after the divestiture, this study could regenerate U.S. policymaking in telecommunication and other publicrealms. It will be essential reading for everyone interested in the current debate over President Clinton's proposals concerning the information infrastructure, for all architects of public policy, and for those who study it.

Restrictions on foreign investment in US telecommunications firms have harmed the interests of American consumers and investors, argues the author of this study. He seeks to show why these restrictions, originally intended to protect America from the perils of wireless telegraphy by foreign agents, should be repealed. Basing his analysis on legislative history, statutory and constitutional interpretation, and finance and trade theory, Sidak demonstrates that these restrictions no longer serve their national security purpose. Instead they deny American consumers lower prices and more robust innovation, hamper access of American investors to foreign telecommunications markets, and unconstitutionally impinge on freedom of speech. The study encompasses the Telecommunications Act of 1996, recent global mergers such as British Telecom-MCI, and the 1997 World Trade Organization agreement to liberalize trade in telecommunications services.

The Nigerian telecommunications industry has continued to grow in a phenomenal manner following market liberalization reforms that commenced in the 1990s. As of 2017, the telecommunications industry was one of the fastest-growing economic sectors in Nigeria and the fourth largest contributor to the country's Gross Domestic Product. The telecommunications industry, however, remains a highly technical and naturally dynamic industry that has not been a usual area for legal research in developing countries such as Nigeria. This book bridges that gap in knowledge by providing an analysis of the legal and policy instruments that regulate the industry. It comprises eleven chapters that discuss the historical evolution of telecommunications and its regulation; the development of the Nigerian telecommunications industry from 1886 to 2017; the legal basis for the regulation of the industry; the licensing and duties of service providers; the regulation of network infrastructure; the protection of consumers; the regulation of competition, interconnection, universal access, and environmental protection; and the resolution of industry disputes. This book will be useful to policy makers, legislators, regulators, lawyers, law students, investors, operators, and consumers, as well as any person interested in the Nigerian telecommunications industry.