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It is generally agreed by all that competition should be allowed in the business of domain name registrations that is dominated by Network Solutions Inc. It has taken four years to come up with a procedure to achieve this. A shared registration system was launched by the Commerce Dept and the Internet Corp for Assigned Names and Numbers in summer 1999. This system will enable new firms to compete with NSI as 'registrars' of names under the '.com' and '.org' domains., How will multiple registrars affect Internet users, and have we chosen the best competitive structure? In 1995, after years of handing them out for free, the National Science Foundation allowed [...]

China's recent double-digit economic growth has impressed the world, but its telecommunications sector has been growing faster than the economy as a whole, expanding at an annual rate of 30%-50% […]

Like many other countries, the United States is in the midst of redefining its universal service policy. Access to telecommunications no longer depends on connecting a copper wire line into the home. Rather, universal service depends on how people will access and use the infrastructure around them. The ability to access communications facilities requires an account relationship between the supplier and the user. Therefore, the account relationship, not the presence of a physical connection to the home, should be the focal point of a universal service policy. With the rise of electronic commerce, access hinges on account verification, credit authorizations, billings, and collection. Metaphorically, the symbol for the third generation of universal service is not the wire, but the card, be it the credit card, the debit card, or the SIM card.

Universal Service and the Telecommunications Act Despite losing most of the political, legal, and regulatory battles of the 1970s, AT&T managed to establish the idea that the 1934 Communications Act […]

New Zealand has moved toward reforming property rights concerning radio frequency bands, including spectrum tenders, though uncertainty and political pressures have hindered radical implementation of reforms. The reforms, carried out by the Ministry of Commerce, shed light on spectrum privatization as a concept. However, issues such the desirability of national or local management rights, and how competition can be encouraged with large bands, have yet to be addressed.

Purpose: This paper aims to analyze the direction and balance of transnational information flows and look at how nonpriced digital information exchanges related to international trade in goods and services. Design/methodology/approach: The authors obtained quantitative data about Web-related data flows between countries and regions using Telegeography data on “Server Location as a Percentage of Top Websites.” They then explore how those flows are correlated to trade in goods. Findings: Web traffic is highly transnational. More than half of the top 100 websites in 9 of the world’s 13 sub-regions are hosted in the USA. More than 15 per cent of the top 100 websites in 9 of the 13 subregions are hosted in Western Europe. East Asia has the largest negative balance in the relationship between incoming and outgoing Web requests. The authors found a very strong negative correlation (−0.878) between Web traffic balances and the balance of trade in goods across all subregions. A similarly strong positive correlation was found with services trade; however, the incompleteness of the data does not allow for strong conclusions yet. Research limitations/implications: Further research is needed to correlate Web traffic flows with capital flows. The authors also do not have a well-developed theory to explain the strong negative correlation between information flows and goods trade. Practical implications: The data and analysis have useful implications for digital economy policy. It indicates that digital protectionism of the sort practice by China may succeed in increasing domestic producers’ share of Web requests, but does not make them globally competitive. The strong negative correlation between the balance of unpriced Web information and the balance of trade in goods indicates interdependence rather than domination, challenging narratives that information flow imbalances are caused by market power of the big platforms. Social implications: The paper demonstrates the degree to which unpriced digital exchanges are transnational and how various countries are more or less globally competitive in the supply of information that the rest of the world finds attractive. Originality/value: No other published papers have used the data on website traffic data, and previous research has not explored empirically the correlation between information flows and goods trade.

Reports that the China's government is trying to impose stricter controls on content and access on the Internet. Regulations on the Internet; How China's Internet started; Classification of the Internet in the country; Categories of Internet networks; Why the Internet's regulations are more flexible than they might at first appear to be; Commercial network approved by the State Council to become national Interconnecting Networks.

During the 1970's, long distance competition began to challenge the whole system of telephone monopoly and regulation. To defend themselves, telephone companies created a self-serving myth that universal household telephone penetration would never have existed without monopoly and regulatory subsidies. They also invented a legislative mandate for their subsidies by grasping at a few words in the preamble of the Communications Act. "Universal service" became the basis of the regulated telephone monopoly's claim for protection and legitimacy. In passing the 1996 Act, the Congress was unwittingly influenced by this mythology, and therefore, concentrated on preserving and extending subsidies. Ironically, the new "pro-competitive" law provides precisely the sort of language the defenders of regulated monopoly wanted to be read into the Communications Act 20 years ago, and is a kind of posthumous political victory for the old Bell System. The new universal service section represents the culmination of a policy debate that began in the 1970's. In order to fully understand the implications of the section and the debate surrounding it, it is essential to analyze the historical development of universal service policy. The authors discuss the observation that universal service policy has gone through two distinct generations.

Enough credibility to regulate the root server databases of the most important communications medium of the 21st century? Organizations and rules aren't normally considered an "infrastructure." But global internetworking simply […]

The rise of Internet communications also means confrontation with the established politico-economic-telecom order. This special section focuses on the emergence of Internet infrastructures in the developing world. The imposing word […]