Providing readers with an authoritative account of what contributed to the "Great Telecom Crash," this insightful resource explores the roots of the perfect storm that buffeted telecom and Internet companies and investors.

With the demise of WorldCom amidst a flurry of accounting scandals dominating the front pages, and following hotly in the footsteps of the equally spectacular downfall of other telecoms giants including Global Crossing and Lucent Technologies in recent months, The Great Telecoms Swindle investigates the reasons behind a roller coaster ride that is set to continue for some time yet. Vivendi, France Telecom, Vodaphone and numerous other corporate behemoths all face testing and possibly life-threatening times that will demand radical solutions in the coming months. The telecoms story is set to run and run and investors are set to continue to feel the heat. For a market that, as little as eighteen months ago amounted to a license to print money, the question 'what went wrong?' must urgently be asked. How could companies like Cisco Systems go from being paragons of virtue in the new corporate age to near pariahs embroiled in a welter of financial difficulties in such a short space of time? Is 'next generation telecoms' nothing more than a myth, a triumph of hype over reality? Tracking the rise and fall of the telecoms market from deregulation in the eighties through the advent of the mobile world, and on to broadband, 3G, and the mobile Internet the authors uncover what fuelled the boom, where the mistakes were made (by industry players and investors alike), and what if anything the future holds. Taking the lid off the headlines, The Great Telecoms Swindle reveals and examines the real problems in the telecoms market today, and exposes an industry that is entirely unsure of its own future value proposition.

So you did not have the kind of meltdown in the broad equities or in the marketplace, in terms of an impact on employment or economic growth, or any of the other substantial impacts that the IT sector had had on the economy in the previous five years, 1995- 2000. [...] I think it's fair to attribute the commission of all of these sins to all of the players in this meltdown: the carriers, the financiers, the policymakers, and the opinion leaders, people like Blair and I. [...] Some of them go to the question of how are you going to divide the pie? It's not about growing the pie or reducing the cost of producing the pie; it's about who gets into the pie. [...] Some of the insiders in the CLECs and other parts of the industry, the DLECs and the backbone carriers, sold their shares before the decline. [...] But by the same token, we're all the beneficiaries of a lot of the operation of the law of the pleasant surprise.

An argument that the movement for network neutrality was of a piece with its neoliberal environment, solidifying the continued existence of a commercially driven internet. Media reform activists rejoiced in 2015 when the FCC codified network neutrality, approving a set of Open Internet rules that prohibitedproviders from favoring some content and applications over others—only to have their hopes dashed two years later when the agency reversed itself. In this book, Russell Newman offers a unique perspective on these events, arguing that the movement for network neutrality was of a piece with its neoliberal environment rather than counter to it; perversely, it served to solidify the continued existence of a commercially dominant internet and even emergent modes of surveillance and platform capitalism. Going beyond the usual policy narrative of open versus closed networks, or public interest versus corporate power, Newman uses network neutrality as a lens through which to examine the ways that neoliberalism renews and reconstitutes itself, the limits of particular forms of activism, and the shaping of future regulatory processes and policies. Newman explores the debate's roots in the 1990s movement for open access, the transition to network neutrality battles in the 2000s, and the terms in which these battles were fought. By 2017, the debate had become unmoored from its own origins, and an emerging struggle against “neoliberal sincerity” points to a need to rethink activism surrounding media policy reform itself.

Shaping American Telecommunications examines the technical, regulatory, and economic forces that have shaped the development of American telecommunications services. This volume is both an introduction to the basic technical, economic, and regulatory principles underlying telecommunications, and a detailed account of major events that have marked development of the sector in the United States. Beginning with the introduction of the telegraph and continuing through to current developments in wireless and online services, authors Christopher H. Sterling, Phyllis W. Bernt, and Martin B.H. Weiss explain each stage of telecommunications development, examining the interplay among technical innovation, policy decisions, and regulatory developments. Offering an integrated treatment of the interplay among technology, policy, and economics as key factors defining the development of the telecommunications sector in the United States, this volume also provides: *background material to facilitate understanding of each sector; *contexts for many so-called "new" issues, problems, and trends, demonstrating origins from years or decades in the past; and *careful annotation, documentation, and reference tables to enable further research on the topics discussed. This unique multidisciplinary approach provides a balanced view of U.S. telecommunications history, in context with relevant economic, legal, social, and technical analyses. As such, it is essential reading for advanced students in telecommunications needing to understand how the telecommunications industry and service developed to its current form. The volume will also serve as a supplemental text in courses on telecommunications regulation, and it will be of value to professionals in the field seeking context and background for their daily work.

Numerous telecommunication companies have entered bankruptcy proceedings in the United States lately, with 2002 being a record year. WorldCom, the second largest long-distance telephone carrier in the country, was one of them. The filing was the largest in the U.S. so far, as well as the accounting scandal in the company. WorldCom's rise and fall typifies the meltdown of the highly leveraged telecommunications sector over the last few years. An industry that historically has outpaced overall economic growth, crashed in the beginning of the new century. The overcapacity in the telecommunications sector, was perhaps the worst in the economy. As the telecom crisis still persists, although there are signals of recovery, here we show the predictability of Altman's Z-Score Model, a simple credit risk model, applying it to some of the major bankruptcy-protection telecom cases. Detailed discussion about WorldCom, as well as the telecommunications services sector in the United States is presented.

In less than a decade, the Internet went from being a series of loosely connected networks used by universities and the military to the powerful commercial engine it is today. This book describes how many of the key innovations that made this possible came from entrepreneurs and iconoclasts who were outside the mainstream—and how the commercialization of the Internet was by no means a foregone conclusion at its outset. Shane Greenstein traces the evolution of the Internet from government ownership to privatization to the commercial Internet we know today. This is a story of innovation from the edges. Greenstein shows how mainstream service providers that had traditionally been leaders in the old-market economy became threatened by innovations from industry outsiders who saw economic opportunities where others didn't—and how these mainstream firms had no choice but to innovate themselves. New models were tried: some succeeded, some failed. Commercial markets turned innovations into valuable products and services as the Internet evolved in those markets. New business processes had to be created from scratch as a network originally intended for research and military defense had to deal with network interconnectivity, the needs of commercial users, and a host of challenges with implementing innovative new services. How the Internet Became Commercial demonstrates how, without any central authority, a unique and vibrant interplay between government and private industry transformed the Internet.