This book is the outgrowth of shared interests between the editors and the contributing authors to provide a multidisciplinary perspective in evaluating universal service policy and recommending policy changes to accommodate a more competitive telecommunications environment. The book is interdisciplinary in nature to reflect the extremely complex context in which universal service policy is formed. The chapter authors represent a broad cross-section of disciplinary training, professional positions, and relationships in the telecommunications industry. Academic disciplines represented include law, economics, anthropology, communication, and business. This book's purpose is to significantly enhance the development of effective telecommunications universal service policy among policymakers, industry members, and stakeholders in the United States. Universal service policy has been, and will continue to be, both enabled and constrained by the simultaneous interaction of social, political, technological, and economic forces in the environment in which it is formed. A more effective process for policy design is to seek agreement on how entitlements embedded in universal service policy should be modified as circumstances invariably change over time. Therefore, the volume reflects recent significant developments in U.S. universal service policy--the implementation of which continues to unfold.

This volume is a theoretically informed comparative analysis of the telecommunications and information policy-making process in two major developing economies, China and India. With a focus on how policies are made rather than what those policies are, the book investigates how policy actors interact within institutional structures to define policy problems and identify potential solutions. The authors explain the evolution of these policy-making systems as the two countries liberalized their economies and opened their media and telecommunications systems to competition over the past two-and-a-half decades. With applications in numerous international contexts, this book will be of interest to scholars and practitioners in public policy studies, telecommunications, business, development economics, political science, Asian studies, and public administration.

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The 'digital divide' refers to the gap between those who have access to the latest information technologies and those who do not. This book presents data supporting the existence of such a divide in the 1990s along racial, economic, and education lines.

This book revisits the critical period of unbridled competition between the Bell System and independent telephone companies early in this century.

This work discusses the issues among people creating computer communication technology, the people using computer communication, the people impacted by it, and the regulators responsible for balancing the interest of these multiple groups.

This collection of essays explores the ethical issues that arise when information technology seems to exceed and even contradict the purpose of its creators. The studies focus upon the management of information technology, specifically the Internet, considering the most ethical ways of generating, using, and controlling information technology in our time. Section One includes essays pertaining to Africa’s place in the 21st century, including democracy, information flow, connections with the world through the Internet, telecommunications, Uganda and the digital divide, and an examination of a pilot study in South Africa for developing a universal tool to measure information poverty. The essays of Section Two cover topical library issues, such as professional information organizations and their ethic codes, communicating ethics when teaching electronic research to undergraduates, pay-for-placement search engines, consumer health information services, laws applying to confidentiality of library records, privacy control after September 11, cybercrime investigation, and the technologies protecting copyright. The essays were originally presented at the “Ethics of Electronic Information in the 21st Century” symposium held at the University of Memphis on October 24-27, 2002. Each includes references and helpful Internet resources.

Shaping American Telecommunications examines the technical, regulatory, and economic forces that have shaped the development of American telecommunications services. This volume is both an introduction to the basic technical, economic, and regulatory principles underlying telecommunications, and a detailed account of major events that have marked development of the sector in the United States. Beginning with the introduction of the telegraph and continuing through to current developments in wireless and online services, authors Christopher H. Sterling, Phyllis W. Bernt, and Martin B.H. Weiss explain each stage of telecommunications development, examining the interplay among technical innovation, policy decisions, and regulatory developments. Offering an integrated treatment of the interplay among technology, policy, and economics as key factors defining the development of the telecommunications sector in the United States, this volume also provides: *background material to facilitate understanding of each sector; *contexts for many so-called "new" issues, problems, and trends, demonstrating origins from years or decades in the past; and *careful annotation, documentation, and reference tables to enable further research on the topics discussed. This unique multidisciplinary approach provides a balanced view of U.S. telecommunications history, in context with relevant economic, legal, social, and technical analyses. As such, it is essential reading for advanced students in telecommunications needing to understand how the telecommunications industry and service developed to its current form. The volume will also serve as a supplemental text in courses on telecommunications regulation, and it will be of value to professionals in the field seeking context and background for their daily work.

This textbook focuses on how media and communications policy is made and what influences its design. It explores the structures and processes in which policymaking takes place worldwide, the factors that determine its forms, influence its elements, and affect its outcomes. It explores how to analyze policy proposals, evaluate policy, and use policy studies approaches to examine policy and policymaking. Truly international in scope, it lays out the variety of political, social, economic, and institutional influences on policy, the roles of industries and policy advocates in the processes, and issues and factors that complicate effective policymaking and skew policy outcomes. This textbook is a valuable resource for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students.