THE U.S. TELECOMMUNICATIONS

INDUSTRY : 1996-1999

Case : II-4Group: BT2C

Outline

•The Telecommunications Act 1996

•RBOCs

•AT&T

•MCI WorldCom

•Qwest

•Technological Developments

History Telecommunications has traditionally been a regulated sector of

the US economy. Regulation was imposed in the early part of this century and remains until today in various parts of the sector.

The main idea behind regulation was that it was necessary because the market for telecommunications services was 1. natural monopoly, and2. a second competitor would not survive.

Regulation was imposed to protect consumers from monopolistic abuses.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996

Enacted by the U.S. Congress on February 1, 1996, and signed into law by President Bill Clinton on February 8, 1996, provided major changes in laws affecting

•cable TV

• telecommunications

•Internet

The Telecommunications Act of 1996

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 The law's main purpose was to stimulate competition in telecommunication services. The law specifies:

•How local telephone carriers can compete

•How and under what circumstances local exchange carriers (LEC) can provide long-distance services

•The deregulation of cable TV rates

Included with the Act was the former Communications Decency Act, which, among other provisions, makes it a crime to convey pornography over the Internet in a way that is easily accessible to children.

The 1996 Act aims to "preserve and advance universal service [254(b)]. This means:(1) High quality at low rates.(2) Access to advanced services in all States.(3) Access in rural and high cost areas at comparable prices to other areas.(4) Supported by "equitable and nondiscriminatory contributions" by "all providers of telecommunications services."(5) Specific and predictable mechanisms to raise the required funds. (6) Access to advanced telecommunications services for schools, health care, and libraries.

Who are the Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs)?

The original 7 RBOCs were formed from the 1984 breakup of AT&T.  AT&T originally consisted of 22 Bell Operating Companies (BOCs).  The 1984 Divestiture merged the 22 BOCs into 7 RBOCs:

•Ameritech •Bell Atlantic •Bell South •Nynex •Pacific Telesis •Southwestern Bell Communications (SBC Communications) •US West

There were originally 7 RBOCs.  Today there are only 3:

•Qwest- created by the merger of US West and Qwest Communications International, Inc.

•at&t - created by the merger of SBC, Ameritech, and Pacific Telesis, AT&T, and Bell South..

•Verizon - created by the merger of Bell Atlantic, Nynex, and GTE.

The largest provider of local, long distance telephone services in the United States, and also serves digital subscriber line Internet access and digital television. AT&T is the second largest provider of wireless service in the United States, with over 81.6 million wireless customers, and more than 150 million total customers

Timelines

•January 31, 2005,SBC announced that it would purchase at&t Corp•November 18, 2005,The merger was finalized •December 29, 2006, twenty-two Bell Operating Companies are become a part of the new AT&T Inc•June 2007,wireless services are the core of "The New AT&T".•June 29, 2007 , AT&T had reached an agreement to purchase Dobson Cellular•June 27, 2008 move its corporate headquarters from San Antonio to Dallas•December 12,2008, AT&T acquired Wayports Inc, a major provider of Internet Hotspots in the United States

MCI, Inc. was an American Telecommunications subsidiary of Verizon Communications that is headquartered in Virginia. The corporation was originally formed as a result of the merger of WorldCom (formerly known as LDDS followed by LDDS WorldCom) and MCI Communications, and used the name MCI WorldCom followed by WorldCom before taking its final name on April 12, 2003 as part of the corporation's emergence from bankruptcy. The company formerly traded on NASDAQ under the symbols "WCOM" (pre-bankruptcy) and "MCIP" (post-bankruptcy). The corporation was purchased by Verizon Communications with the deal closing on July 7, 2006, and is now identified as that company's Verizon Business division with the local residential divisions slowly integrated into local Verizon subsidiaries.

Timelines

•In 1989, The company went public through a merger with Advantage Companies Inc•In 1995 The company name was changed to LDDS WorldCom, and later just WorldCom•November 10, 1997, WorldCom and MCI Communications announced merger to form MCI WorldCom, making it the largest merger in US history. •September 15, 1998 the new company, MCI WorldCom, opened for business•October 5, 1999 Sprint Communication and MCI WorldCom announced a $129 billion merger agreement between the two companies.•July 13, 2000, MCI WorldCom renamed itself "WorldCom" without Sprint being part of the company.

Qwest Communications International, Inc. is a large telecommunications carrier. Qwest provides local service in 14 western U.S. states.Qwest provides voice, backbone data services, and digital television in some areas. It operates in three segments: Wireline Services, Wireless Services, and Other Services. Qwest Communications also provides long-distance services and broadband data, as well as voice and video communications globally. The company sells its products and services to small businesses, governmental entities, and public and private educational institutions through various channels, including direct-sales marketing, telemarketing, arrangements with third-party agents, company’s Web site, and partnership relations.

Timelines

•In 1997,Qwest Communications acquiring internet service provider SuperNet.•In 1998, and followed again by the acquisition of Icon CMT,a web hosting provider•In 1998, Qwest is provide of high speed data to the niche market of corporate customers and quick-growing residential and business long distance customer base that it quickly merged into its data service.•June 30 2000,Qwest merged with “Baby Bell" US West•In 2004, Qwest became the first Regional Bell operating company (RBOC) in the United States to offer Standalone DSL

TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION

DSLDSL or xDSL is a family of technologies that provides

digital data transmission over the wires of a local telephone network. DSL originally stood for digital subscriber loop, but as of 2009 the term digital subscriber line has been widely adopted as a more marketing-friendly term for Asymmetric Digital Subscriber line (ADSL), The download speed of consumer DSL services typically ranges from 384 kilobits per second (kbps) to 20 megabits per second (Mbps), depending on DSL technology, line conditions and service-level implementation. Typically, upload speed is lower than download speed for ADSL and equal to download speed for the rarer Symmetric Digital Subscriber line (SDSL),

DSL technology expands

• DSL had achieved its original goal to bring high-speed information to homes and businesses over ordinary copper telephone lines. Now, as technology advanced, other forms of DSL became available. XDSL became the common term for the whole DSL family, with variations like ADSL, RADSL and VDSL following. •ADSL provides greater bandwidth for so-called downstream (from provider to consumer) traffic at the expense of lesser upstream (from consumer to provider) bandwidth. ADSL takes advantage of the typical pattern of Internet access by home users who frequently download large amounts of Web site data but upload relatively small amounts of data.

DSL technology expands

•RADSL (Rate-adaptive DSL) is an ADSL technology utilizing software to determine the rate at which signals can be transmitted on a given customer phone line and adjust the delivery rate accordingly. •VDSL (Very-high-data-rate DSL) is a developing technology that promises much higher data rates over relatively short distances. It was developed to support exceptionally high-bandwidth applications such as High-Definition Television (HDTV). To perform at this speed, VDSL relies on fiber optic cabling. It’s designed to work more as a business service than as a consumer service.

Look at just a few ways people can use the Internet to add value to their lives:

•on-line shopping •education •travel planning •real-time gaming •on-line chats •accessing streaming media, including video-on-demand •home-based businesses

Cable modem

cable modem is a type of network bridge and modem that provides bi-directional data communication via radio frequency channels on a cable television(CATV) infrastructure. Cable modems are primarily used to deliver broadband Internet access in the form of cable Internet, taking advantage of the high bandwidth of a cable television network. They are commonly deployed in Australia, Europe, and North and South America. In the USA alone there were 22.5 million cable modem users during the first quarter of 2005, up from 17.4 million in the first quarter of 2004

FutureIn 2007 Comcast Corp shows off for the first time in public

new technology that enabled a data download speed of 150 megabits per second, or roughly 25 times faster than today's standard cable modems.

The new cable technology is crucial because the industry is competing with a speedy new offering called FiOS, a TV and Internet service that Verizon Communications Inc. is selling over a new fiber-optic network. The top speed currently available through FiOS is 50 megabits per second, but the network is already capable of providing 100 Mbps and the fiber lines offer nearly unlimited potential.

Future

"If you look at what just happened, 55 million words, 100,000 articles, more than 22,000 pictures, maps and more than 400 video clips,". "The same download on dial-up would have taken two weeks."

Dense Wavelength-division multiplexing

In fiber-optic communications, Dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) is a technology which multiplexes multiple optical carrier signals on a single optical fiber by using different wavelengths (colors) of laser light to carry different signals. This allows for a multiplication in capacity, in addition to enabling bidirectional communications over one strand of fiber. This is a form of frequency division multiplexing (FDM) but is commonly called wavelength division multiplexing.

How to WDM work?WDM systems are popular with telecommunications

companies because they allow them to expand the capacity of the network without laying more fiber. By using WDM and optical amplifiers, they can accommodate several generations of technology development in their optical infrastructure without having to overhaul the backbone network. Capacity of a given link can be expanded by simply upgrading the multiplexers and demultiplexers at each end.

This is often done by using optical-to-electrical-to-optical (O/E/O) translation at the very edge of the transport network, thus permitting interoperation with existing equipment with optical interfaces.

How to WDM work?

Most WDM systems operate on single mode fiber optical cables, which have a core diameter of 9 µm. Certain forms of WDM can also be used in multi-mode fiber cables(also known as premises cables) which have core diameters of 50 or 62.5 µm.Early WDM systems were expensive and complicated to run. However, recent standardization and better understanding of the dynamics of WDM systems have made WDM less expensive to deploy.

Internet Telephony

Internet telephony also transmits using data packets. Analog voice signals are digitized, sent in discreet packets to the destination, reassembled and reverted back to analog signals. By using Internet telephony, one can place long-distance calls free of telephone charges. The catch is that both parties must have Internet telephony software. If Internet telephony is used to call a land-line or cell phone, charges apply, though they are usually minimal.

History of Internet Telephony

With traditional telephone service, sometimes referred to as POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service), voice signals use telephone lines -- copper wires -- and circuit switches to communicate. Internet telephony eliminates the telco company all together by using computer networks to send voice signals. All information is transferred across the Internet in "data packets." For example, if you send your friend an email, the email is broken up into a series of data packets that each take their own route to the destination mail server. Once there, the packets reassemble themselves into the full email message.

History of Internet Telephony

Internet telephony has drastically improved since its first incarnations. Initial VoIP(Voice over IP) was very poor quality, but now many users report land line-like quality. There are many advantages to using Internet telephony, not just for family members and friends to stay in touch free of charge, but for multi-state or multi-national corporate PBXs where routine long distance calls between offices are significant. A potential disadvantage of using Internet telephony for corporate environments is that VoIP tends to have more downtime than POTS. Computer or network problems can interfere with Internet telephony, though many VoIP programs kick calls to POTS if there is a problem.

Broadband

Broadband in telecommunications refers to a signaling method that includes or handles a relatively wide range (or band) of frequencies, which may be divided into channels or frequency bins. In data communications an analog modem will transmit a bandwidth of 56 kilobits per seconds (kbit/s) over a telephone line; over the same telephone line a bandwidth of several megabits per second can be handled by ADSL, which is described as broadband (relative to a modem over a telephone line, although much less than can be achieved over a fiber optic circuit).

History of BroadbandBroadband Internet access, often shortened to just

broadband, is a high data rate Internet access—typically contrasted with dial-up access using a 56k modem.Dial-up modems are limited to a bitrate of less than 56 kbit/s (kilobits per second) and require the full use of a telephone line—whereas broadband technologies supply more than double this rate and generally without disrupting telephone use.

History Broadband

Although various minimum bandwidths have been used in definitions of broadband, ranging up from 64 kbit/s up to 2.0 Mbit/s, the 2006 OECD(Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development ) report is typical by defining broadband as having download data transfer rates equal to or faster than 256 kbit/s, while the United States (US) Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as of 2009, defines "Basic Broadband" as data transmission speeds exceeding 768 kilobits per second (Kbps), or 768,000 bits per second, in at least one direction: downstream (from the Internet to the user’s computer) or upstream (from the user’s computer to the Internet)]. The trend is to raise the threshold of the broadband definition as the marketplace rolls out faster services.

History Broadband

Data rates are defined in terms of maximum download because several common consumer broadband technologies such as ADSL are "asymmetric"—supporting much slower maximum upload data rate than download.

Referrence•http://searchcio-midmarket.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid183_gci213085,00.html•http://www.stern.nyu.edu/networks/telco96.html •http://www.nebs-faq.com/who_are_the_regional_bell_operating.htm•http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T•http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MCI_WorldCom•http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwest•http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wavelength-division_multiplexing •http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-internet-telephony.htm •http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadband •http://www.speedguide.net/read_articles.php?id=1414 •http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18569662/•http://www.consumersunion.org/telecom/ex5.jpg•http://www.consumersunion.org/telecom/ex6.jpg