Telecommunications Policy Of The United States
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Telecommunications Policy Of The United States
The telecommunications policy of the United States is a framework of law directed by government and the regulatory commissions, most notably the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Two landmark acts prevail today, the Communications Act of 1934 and the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The latter was intended to revise the first act and specifically to foster competition in the telecommunications industry. Aims In the name of public interest, a large proportion of telecommunications policy is concerned with the economic regulation of interstate and international communication. This includes all communication by radio, telephone, wire, cable and satellite. Telecommunications policy outlines antitrust laws as is common for industries with large barriers to entry. Other features of the policies addressed include common carrier laws which controls access to networks. While the telephone providers are required to be common carriers, there is an ongoing net neutrality debate about t ...
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Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdiction over the areas of broadband access, fair competition, radio frequency use, media responsibility, public safety, and homeland security. The FCC was formed by the Communications Act of 1934 to replace the radio regulation functions of the Federal Radio Commission. The FCC took over wire communication regulation from the Interstate Commerce Commission. The FCC's mandated jurisdiction covers the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the territories of the United States. The FCC also provides varied degrees of cooperation, oversight, and leadership for similar communications bodies in other countries of North America. The FCC is funded entirely by regulatory fees. It has an estimated fiscal-2022 budget of US $388 million. It has 1,482 ...
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National Telecommunications And Information Administration
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce that serves as the President's principal adviser on telecommunications policies pertaining to the United States' economic and technological advancement and to regulation of the telecommunications industry. Among its stated goals are: * Working to ensure that all Americans have affordable phone and cable TV service. * Helping to bring the benefits of advanced telecommunications technologies to millions of Americans in rural and underserved urban areas through its information infrastructure grants. * Providing the hardware that enables public radio and television broadcasters to extend and maintain the reach of their programming. * Advocating competition and liberalization of telecommunications policies around the world. * Participating in international government-to-government negotiations to open markets for U.S. companies. * Negotiating with foreig ...
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Public Broadcasting In The United States
In the United States, other than a few direct services, public broadcasting is almost entirely decentralized and is not operated by the government, but does receive some government support. Background The U.S. public broadcasting system differs from such systems in other countries, in that the principal public television and radio broadcasters – the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR), respectively – operate as technically separate entities. Some of the funding comes from community support to hundreds of public radio and public television stations, each of which is an individual entity licensed to one of several different non-profit organizations, municipal or state governments, or universities. Sources of funding also include on-air and online pledge drives and the sale of underwriting "spots" (typically running 15–30 seconds) to sponsors. Individual stations and programs rely on highly varied proportions of funding. Program-by-program funding cr ...
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Network Neutrality In The United States
In the United States, net neutrality, the principle that Internet service providers (ISPs) treat all data on the Internet the same, and not discriminate, has been an issue of contention between network users and access providers since the 1990s. With net neutrality, ISPs may not intentionally block, slow down, or charge money for specific online content. Without net neutrality, ISPs may prioritize certain types of traffic, meter others, or potentially block traffic from specific services, while charging consumers for various tiers of service. A core issue to net neutrality is how ISPs should be classified under the Communications Act of 1934 as amended by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, as either Title I "information services" or Title II "common carrier services". The classification affects the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) authority over ISPs: the FCC would have significant ability to regulate ISPs if classified as Title II common carriers, but would have little ...
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Layered Model Of Regulation
The layered model of telecommunication regulation is a proposal for nascent US telecommunication public policies that mimic the horizontal characteristics of Internet Protocol communication and the OSI model. Advocates of layered telecommunication policies argue that current US regulations are not longer appropriate for new information technologies as functionally similar services (such as DSL and cable modems) are not governed by a common set of rules but instead subject to separate regulatory systems written for each distinct media type such as the telephone or cable television systems. The layered policy model proposes a regulatory system that classifies technologies based on their common layered characteristics instead of regulating each communication technology with a disparate set of rules. Horizontal policy advocates argue that this modular approach to regulation promotes competition by forcing all telecommunication services to adhere to a uniform set of characteristic-bas ...
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Federal Standard 1037C
Federal Standard 1037C, titled Telecommunications: Glossary of Telecommunication Terms, is a United States Federal Standard issued by the General Services Administration pursuant to the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act of 1949, as amended. This document provides federal departments and agencies a comprehensive source of definitions of terms used in telecommunications and directly related fields by international and U.S. government telecommunications specialists. As a publication of the U.S. government, prepared by an agency of the U.S. government, it appears to be mostly available as a public domain resource, but a few items are derived from copyrighted sources: where this is the case, there is an attribution to the source. This standard was superseded in 2001 by American National Standard T1.523-2001, Telecom Glossary 2000, which is published by ATIS. The old standard is still frequently used, because the new standard is protected by copyright, as usual for A ...
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Common Carrier
A common carrier in common law countries (corresponding to a public carrier in some civil law systems,Encyclopædia Britannica CD 2000 "Civil-law public carrier" from "carriage of goods" usually called simply a ''carrier'') is a person or company that transports goods or people for any person or company and is responsible for any possible loss of the goods during transport.Longman Business English Dictionary A common carrier offers its services to the general public under license or authority provided by a regulatory body, which has usually been granted "ministerial authority" by the legislation that created it. The regulatory body may create, interpret, and enforce its regulations upon the common carrier (subject to judicial review) with independence and finality as long as it acts within the bounds of the enabling legislation. A common carrier (also called a ''public carrier'' in British English) is distinguished from a contract carrier, which is a carrier that transports goo ...
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Broadband Open Access
Broadband open access is an issue of policy debate in telecommunications, regarding whether or not companies which own broadband telecommunication infrastructure (such as cable operators) should be required to provide access to their facilities for competing businesses which do not own physical infrastructure. The issue came to the fore in the U.S. in 1998, when AT&T Corporation announced its plan to acquire TCI, then the nation's largest cable operator. It involved municipal and local governments, the courts, Federal Communications Commission (the FCC), Congress, businesses, industry associations, consumer advocacy groups, and many others. Similar issues arose in other countries such as the Netherlands, Hungary, and Canada. In the United States, cable operators were not required to provide access to their facilities to other competing businesses. However, local telephone providers with physical infrastructure, or incumbent local exchange carriers, had such an obligation. This a ...
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Telecommunication
Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than that feasible with the human voice, but with a similar scale of expediency; thus, slow systems (such as postal mail) are excluded from the field. The transmission media in telecommunication have evolved through numerous stages of technology, from beacons and other visual signals (such as smoke signals, semaphore telegraphs, signal flags, and optical heliographs), to electrical cable and electromagnetic radiation, including light. Such transmission paths are often divided into communication channels, which afford the advantages of multiplexing multiple concurrent communication sessions. ''Telecommunication'' is often used in its plural form. Other examples of pre-modern long-distance communication included audio messages, such as coded drumb ...
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Municipal Broadband
Municipal broadband is broadband Internet access owned by public entities. Services are often provided either fully or partially by local governments to residents within certain areas or jurisdictions. Common connection technologies include unlicensed wireless (Wi-Fi, wireless mesh networks), licensed wireless (such as WiMAX), and fiber optic cable. Many cities that previously deployed Wi-Fi based solutions, likComcastanCharter Spectrum are switching to municipal broadband. Municipal fiber-to-the-home networks are becoming more prominent because of increased demand for modern audio and video applications, which are increasing bandwidth requirements by 40% per year. Supporters of municipal broadband argue that when cities create their own internet and broadband, customers ultimately get faster internet speeds, lower prices, and better customer service than from internet service providers. The purpose of municipal broadband is to provide internet access to those who cannot afford inte ...
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LoopCo
{{no footnotes, date=December 2018 LoopCo is an economic model created in the mid-1990s as a proposal to the Federal Communications Commission and the U.S. Congress for the healthy development of competition in the local and long distance telephone industries in the United States. While there was widespread support among competitors in the industry, the concept was not implemented. Instead, the Telecom Act of 1996 was implemented in a form that resulted in the reduction of telecommunications competition in the local loop. The original proposal was designed and named by Roy Morris, an adjunct professor at Capitol College, and with US ONE Communications, one of the early entrants in the local telephone business (and, incidentally, one of the first to exit that business). The fundamental economic principles were developed based on earlier research and publications of Jerry Duvall, a prominent economist An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social sciences, social ...
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FTTH
Fiber to the ''x'' (FTTX; also spelled "fibre") or fiber in the loop is a generic term for any broadband network architecture using optical fiber to provide all or part of the local loop used for last mile telecommunications. As fiber optic cables are able to carry much more data than copper cables, especially over long distances, copper telephone networks built in the 20th century are being replaced by fiber. FTTX is a generalization for several configurations of fiber deployment, arranged into two groups: FTTP/FTTH/FTTB (Fiber laid all the way to the premises/home/building) and FTTC/N (fiber laid to the cabinet/node, with copper wires completing the connection). Residential areas already served by balanced pair distribution plant call for a trade-off between cost and capacity. The closer the fiber head, the higher the cost of construction and the higher the channel capacity. In places not served by metallic facilities, little cost is saved by not running fiber to the h ...
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