Universal Service : Competition, Interconnection and Monopoly in the Making of the American Telephone System [Hardcover]

Milton L. Mueller (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1998

This book revisits the critical period of unbridled competition between the Bell System and independent telephone companies early in this century.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Milton L. Mueller is Professor at Syracuse University's School of Information Studies and XS4All Professor at Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands. He is the author of Ruling the Root: Internet Governance and the Taming of Cyberspace (MIT Press, 2002) and other books. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 213 pages
• Publisher: Aei Press; 1st edition (June 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0844740632
• ISBN-13: 978-0844740638
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,902,355 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Dr. Milton Mueller is Professor at the Syracuse University School of Information Studies. A passionate advocate of Internet freedom and transnational governance for the Internet, his research focuses on property rights, institutions and global governance in communication and information industries.

As one of the founders of the Internet Governance Project, Mueller helped create an alliance of scholars in action around global Internet policy issues. His book Ruling the Root: Internet Governance and the Taming of Cyberspace (MIT Press, 2002) was the first book-length analysis of the political and economic forces leading to the creation of ICANN. His new book about Internet governance, Networks and States: The Global Politics of Internet Governance (MIT Press, 2010), examines the Internet as a site of institutional innovation that transcends the nation state but also serves as the situs of conflict between national and global forms of regulation and control. Currently, he is doing research on the ISP intermediary responsibility, IP addressing policy, the policy implications of Deep Packet Inspection technology and the security governance practices of ISPs.

Mueller has played a leading role in organizing and mobilizing civil society in ICANN and in the Internet Governance Forum. He was a founder of the Noncommercial Users Constituency in ICANN and served as its chair for several terms. He has served as an elected member of ICANN's GNSO Council and has worked on various task forces related to new top level domains, Whois/privacy, and the .org reassignment. Mueller is on the Advisory Council of Public Interest Registry (.org).

Mueller received the Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1989. He did his undergraduate work at various institutions in Chicago, specializing in Animation, Filmmaking and so-called "new media" technologies in the mid-1970s, ultimately receiving the B.A. from Columbia College in 1976.From January 2008 to December 2010 he held the XS4All Chair devoted to the "security and privacy of Internet users" at the Technology University of Delft, Netherlands.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Extraordinary, April 17, 2000

By 

Larry Lessig - See all my reviews

This review is from: Universal Service : Competition, Interconnection and Monopoly in the Making of the American Telephone System (Hardcover)

In this crisply written mix of history and clear theory, Mueller retells the history of early competition in telephony -- and of the role of regulation in making the AT&T monopoly. The book brings to life a completely forgotten period, where telephones were like computer operating systems today -- competing yet incompatible. Not every phone could be called from every phone, and this fact, Mueller convincingly argues, pushed competition in telephone penetration.

The book also is convincing in its account of the reconstruction of the meaning of the word "universal service" which was brought about, Mueller argues, by AT&T revisionism in the 1970s. The original meaning was simply that any phone would be able to call any phone; the modern meaning (that some service subsidizes other service) was a construction of a late monopoly trying to defend itself.

The book suggests wonderful (if under developed) parallels with the story of competition in modern operating systems. And it offers some important skepticism about the 1996 Telecommunications Act.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent Book, September 25, 2006

By 

Robert Cannon "Cybertelecom" (Arlington, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Universal Service : Competition, Interconnection and Monopoly in the Making of the American Telephone System (Hardcover)

An excellent book that explores the myth of telecommunications policy. A problem in telecommunications policy is that the regulatory approaches have been sufficiently long lived that those who regulate today were not around when the regulatory policy was established. We have lived so long with regulatory approach that we have lost site of regulatory policy. As we today address, should a VoIP phone be regulated like a Verizon POTS phone, the answer is normally "Yes" because "like things should be regulated the same." This articulates a regulatory approach devoid of comprehension as to why a Verizon POTS phone was ever regulated in the first place. Milton Mueller takes us there and explores through his dissection of Universal Service what first brought about these policies, who sought them, and what gain they thought might be achieved through regulation. Today's universal service (98% of all americans have phones) is a grand achievement, but it is a far cry from what AT&T meant by "universal service" in 1908.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Must reading in telecommunications policy, March 12, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Universal Service: Competition, Interconnection, and Monopoly in the Making of the American Telephone System (AEI Studies in Telecommunications Deregulation) (Hardcover)

A fascinating account of telephone competition in the early 1900s, when the competing telephone systems did not connect. Mueller's analysis of the experience of a fragmented telecommunications infrastructure--and the decision to put an end to it in the name of "universal service"--has important implications for Internet and telecom development today.

John Crook