Posts in month: May, 2007

When someone mentions the word telecommunications equipment, the first image that springs into the mind of a layperson is a telephone. While this is somewhat accurate in most parts, it is the process of transmitting data over a distance using signals for the purpose of communication or exchanging data information. A telephone is one method of transmitting this information, though this is the most common way of communicating with someone else by vocally exchanging information.

Telecommunications equipment comes in various different forms and not just as a telephone handset. The following are a form of telecommunications equipment, radio, television, internet, computer networks and mobile telephones. These provide data and information in very different ways from each other. Some are designed for visual information, such as the television or computer devices. Televisions are common in practically every home, making it the main form of quick entertainment and fast communicator for vital pieces of information.

Everyone are familiar with a computer and are aware of how this is a more accurate way of receiving messages, obtaining important information and communicating with people over longer distances. Often this can be a more reliable source for trying to reach people, whereby a telephone may not receive and transfer signals well. In the past, making long distance phone calls required much more time to connect, as well as more concentration on trying to listen to each other speak.

The internet is a great source for providing effective communication using voice over internet protocols, such as Skype, MSN Messenger, Vonage, BT and PlusTalk. These are just some of the biggest internet telephony providers, which allow users to connect to and contact other internet telephony users provided they have an account set up and have exchanged profile information with the other party. The difference is there is not always a telephone provided for most of the software (Skype had introduced Skype Phones for users wanting to call landlines) and the connection is via a broadband internet connection.

Telecommunications equipment have taken a step further into allowing people who are deaf or hard of hearing to contact other people using video telephoning, which most telephone company providers offer with their prices. This is ideal especially for people looking to make social calls and can use their sign language skill for effective communication. These come at no further charge and calls are at the same price as normal landline calls.

Some telephones have a specific operating system, which allows you to text, or communicate with an operator through typing. These are ideal for those who cannot afford video telephoning. Text messages on mobile phones and using the internet is another useful tool for people with hearing disabilities to communicate with other people. Instead of perceiving them as expensive objects, they are now an important of our daily living, which means they need to be quicker at transmitting information and accessible to everyone.

These kinds of telecommunication equipment have seen changes from improved audio quality to clear picture quality that allows people to see each other in real time. This is a far cry from the days of sending smoke signals and sending hand-written letters.

The telecommunications revolution the merging of voice, video and other data transmission and the proliferation of new telecommunications products and services has been one of America’s leading technological and economic success stories. At bottom, the key reason is that our scientists, engineers and businesses have developed and introduced telecommunications technologies at a faster pace than anywhere else in the world.

Public policies that have promoted competition have been critical to this result. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in the case of telephone services, where through the efforts over two decades of the Justice Department and Judge Harold Greene, and the work of the FCC, competition has become the central organizing principle of the industry.

Until the Department sued and eventually broke up AT&T, that company had a monopoly over this nation’s telephone market. It was a regulated monopoly, to be sure. But it was also one that thwarted competition and innovation. New companies like MCI that wanted to provide long-distance service could not do so because AT&T’s local operating companies refused to provide interconnections to their local loops. Similarly, other manufacturers of telephone equipment wanted to sell equally, if not more, innovative products but were frustrated by AT&T from doing so because of the telephone company’s incentives and ability, through its monopoly control of the local loop, to buy such equipment only from its wholly owned subsidiary. Western Electric.

These practices were ended when the Department of Justice, led by my antitrust law professor in law school, William Baxter, obtained a consent decree in 1982. A Modification of Final Judgment (MFJ) has since been administered with remarkable energy and wisdom by Judge Greene, to whom this nation owes enormous gratitude.

By unleashing competition in various segments of the telephone industry, the MFJ has delivered the benefits that competition in other markets routinely guarantees: innovation, better products and services, greater efficiency, and lower prices. Consider that since the MFJ:

Interstate long-distance prices for the average residential customer in real terms (adjusted for inflation) have fallen by more than 50 percent without compromising universal service;

There has been a virtual explosion in the types of telephones and services that consumers can choose from;

Competition has stimulated the development of hundreds of innovative voice and data services (such as call waiting and voice mail);

Spurred by smaller carriers and MCI and Sprint, the three largest long-distance providers (including AT&T) now have laid fiber optic cable throughout much of the country and thus have already built significant portions of the backbone for the Nil; and

Competition in the telephone equipment market has opened whole new markets and spawned the development and sale of new products.

In short, the MFJ has enabled the United States to maintain its technological leadership in telecommunications. Nations that have stuck to the old monopoly model of telephone services have fallen behind. That is why many are now trying to emulate us, rather than the other way around.