The U.S. Telecommunications Industry : 1996-1999

Case 2-4 BT2C

Outline

•The Telecommunications Act 1996

•RBOCs

•AT&T

•MCI WorldCom

•Sprint

•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:

The Telecom

mu-nications Act of

1996

The 1996 Act aims to "preserve and advance universal service [254(b)]. This means:

preserve and advance universal service

High quality at low rates

Access to advanced services

in all States.

Access in rural and high cost areas at comparable prices

to other areas.

Supported by "equitable and

nondiscrimi-natory contributions"

Access to advanced

telecommunications services for

schools, health care, and libraries.

Specific and predictable

mechanisms to raise the required

funds.

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:

RBOCs

Ameritech

Bell Atlantic

Bell South Nynex

Pacific Telesis Southwestern Bell

Communica-tions (SBC)

US West

Who are the Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs)?

Who are the Long-Distance Carriers?

at&t

MCI Worldcom

Sprint

Qwest

Revenues

at&tMCIQwestWorldcomSprint

Financial Data For major long-distance carrier 1996

In million dollarsat&t = 52,184MCI = 18,494Qwest = 231Worldcom = 4,485Sprint = 14,045

Revenues

at&tMCIQwestWorldcomSprint

Financial Data For major long-distance carrier 1997

In million dollarsat&t = 51,319MCI = 19,653Qwest = 697Worldcom = 7,351Sprint = 14,874

Revenues

at&tMCIQwestWorldcomSprint

Financial Data For major long-distance carrier 1998

In million dollarsat&t = 53,223MCI* = 0Qwest = 2,243Worldcom = 17,678Sprint = 17,134

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

at&t TimelinesJune 27, 2008 move its corporate headquarters from San Antonio to Dallas

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).

MCI Timelines

In 1989, The company went public through a merger with Advantage Companies Inc

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.

Sprint Nextel Corporation is a telecommunications company based in Kansas.The company owns and operates the third-largest wireless telecommunications network in United States, with 49.3 million customers. Sprint is a global Internet carrier and makes up a portion of the Internet backbone. In the United States, the company also operates the largest wireless broadband network and is the third-largest long distance provider.

Sprint Timelines

In September 1996, Sprint announced a deal with RadioShack

On October 5, 1999, Sprint and MCI WorldCom announced a $129 billion merger agreement between the two companies.

In 2005,The company was created by the $35 billion purchase of Nextel Communications by Sprint Corporation.

In 2006, the company spun off its local landline telephone business, naming it Embarq

In 2009, Sprint announced that the day-to-day operations management of its entire wireless network will be turned over to the Sweden-based Ericsson.

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.

Qwest 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

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

Technology and Innovation

Technology and Innovation

DSL

Cable modem

Dense Wavelength-division multiplexing

Internet Telephony

Broadband

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

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

Future of Cable modemIn 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, 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 of Cable modem

"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."

50 Mb100M

b150M

b

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

PBXs

VoIP

POTS

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

History of Broadband

100 M

3.0 M

56k

Infrastructure Bandwidth Requirements

Media transmitted Required bandwidth

Styled text 2-10 Kbps

Speech graded audio 32-64 Kbps

Still images 10-128 Kbps

Low quality compressed video

100 Kbps to 1.5 Mbps

High fidelity audio 176 Kbps to 1.5 Mbps

Medium quality compressed video

1.5 – 6 Mbps

High quality compressed video

6-24 Mbps

Visualization 50-100 Mbps

Reference•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://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint • http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18569662/•http://www.consumersunion.org/telecom/ex5.jpg•http://www.consumersunion.org/telecom/ex6.jpg