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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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, internet, wi-fi, 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 established pursuant to the Communications Act of 1934 to replace the radio regulation functions of the previous 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 in North America. The FCC is funded entirely by regulatory fees. It has an estimated fiscal-2022 budg ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Air Traffic Control
Air traffic control (ATC) is a service provided by ground-based air traffic controllers who direct aircraft on the ground and through a given section of controlled airspace, and can provide advisory services to aircraft in non-controlled airspace. The primary purpose of ATC is to prevent collisions, organise and expedite the flow of traffic in the air, and provide information and other support for pilots. Personnel of air traffic control monitor aircraft location in their assigned airspace by radar and communicate with the pilots by radio. To prevent collisions, ATC enforces Separation (air traffic control), traffic separation rules, which ensure each aircraft maintains a minimum amount of 'empty space' around it at all times. It is also common for ATC to provide services to all General aviation, private, Military aviation, military, and commercial aircraft operating within its airspace; not just civilian aircraft. Depending on the type of flight and the class of airspace, AT ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 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 creates the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Network Neutrality In The United States
In the United States, net neutrality—the principle that Internet service providers (ISPs) should make no distinctions between different kinds of content on the Internet, and to not discriminate based on such distinctions—has been an issue of contention between end-users and ISPs since the 1990s. With net neutrality, ISPs may not intentionally block, slow down, or charge different rates for specific online content. Without net neutrality, ISPs may prioritize certain types of traffic, meter others, or potentially block specific types of content, while charging consumers different rates for that content. 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 determines the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) authority over ISPs: the FCC would have significant ability to regulate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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-ba ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Common Carrier
A common carrier in common law countries (corresponding to a public carrier in some civil law (legal system), 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 Legal liability, responsible for any possible loss of the goods during transport. 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 transpor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Telecommunications And Information Administration
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) is a bureau 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. Agency goals 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. * Negotiati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Regional Bell Operating Company
A Regional Bell Operating Company (RBOC) was a corporate entity created as result of the antitrust lawsuit by the United States Department of Justice against the Western Electric Company and American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) in 1949 and a suit in 1974 against AT&T ('' United States v. AT&T''). The suits were settled in the Modification of Final Judgment in August 1982. AT&T agreed to divest its local exchange service operating companies, effective January 1, 1984. The group of local operating companies were split into seven independent Regional Bell Operating Companies, which became known as the Baby Bells. Three companies still exist that have an RBOC as a predecessor: AT&T, Verizon, and Lumen Technologies (formerly CenturyTel and CenturyLink). Some other companies are holding onto smaller segments of the companies. Baby Bells A "Baby Bell" is a local telephone company in the United States that was in existence at the time of the breakup of AT&T into the resulti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bell System
The Bell System was a system of telecommunication companies, led by the Bell Telephone Company and later by the AT&T Corporation, American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), that dominated the telephone services industry in North America for over 100 years from its creation in 1877 until United States v. AT&T (1982), its antitrust breakup in 1983. The system of companies was often colloquially called Ma Bell (as in "Mother Bell"), as it held a vertical monopoly over telecommunication products and services in most areas of the United States and Canada. At the time of the breakup of the Bell System in the early 1980s, it had assets of $150 billion (equivalent to $ billion in ) and employed over one million people. Beginning in the 1910s, American antitrust regulators had been observing and accusing the Bell System of abusing its monopoly power, and had brought legal action multiple times over the decades. In 1974 the United States Department of Justice Antitrust Division, Anti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Public Utility
A public utility company (usually just utility) is an organization that maintains the infrastructure for a public service (often also providing a service using that infrastructure). Public utilities are subject to forms of public control and regulation ranging from local community-based groups to statewide government monopolies. Public utilities are meant to supply goods and services that are considered essential; water, gas, electricity, telephone, waste disposal, and other communication systems represent much of the public utility market. The transmission lines used in the transportation of electricity, or natural gas pipelines, have natural monopoly characteristics. A monopoly can occur when it finds the best way to minimize its costs through economies of scale to the point where other companies cannot compete with it. For example, if many companies are already offering electricity, the additional installation of a power plant will only disadvantage the consumer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
