Regulatory and economic issues in computer communications

The rapid growth of computer communications in recent years has brought with it a number of difficult and controversial regulatory and economic problems. As the government agency responsible for the regulation of interstate common-carrier communications, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has been faced with many of these issues. This paper attempts to focus, in a tutorial fashion, upon four areas in the computer-communications field in which the influence of the FCC has been particularly significant. An overview of the regulatory process is given as background, after which we discuss the regulation of commercial computer-communications services, the interconnection of subscriber equipment to the telephone network, the creation of specialized communications carriers and of domestic satellite systems, and finally a number of data communications pricing problems which have arisen as a result of these developments.