The Telecommunications Act of 1996: residential rates and competition

Deconstructing the Divide: Extending Broadband xDSL Services to the Periphery

“…This attempt to establish facilitiesbased competition between incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs) (for example, Baby Bells') and competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs) has not been particularly successful. In part it was believed that deregulation would not only lower the cost of local telephone service, but would also dramatically enhance the quality of service offered by telecommunication providers (Loube, 2004). However, recent research suggests that the residential telephone rates in many markets have actually increased (Loube, 2004;Wimmer and Rosston, 2005) and that measures of service quality remain mixed (Clements, 2004).…”