Introduction to Telecommunications Industries

Introduction

The various industries that are the focus of our telecommunications profile historically provided four distinct consumer-facing products -- home telephony, mobile telephony, television, and internet access. But these historical divisions are disappearing. Cable and telephone companies now compete directly to provide the dominant "triple play": both now provide a high bandwidth pipe to the home that they use to sell their own managed voice and video services, along with general purpose data transmission to the public internet. Cell phone companies are also racing to become broadband providers, with data rapidly overtaking voice as the dominant source of revenue in the industry. Their product remains different from home broadband because it offers ubiquitous access, at the price of lower overall bandwidth. Most analysts assume that the mobile and residential segments will therefore remain distinct and complementary, because consumers will want both ubiquitous access (even if somewhat slower) and high speed access (even if confined to the home). Still, even these boundaries are beginning to blur as consumer devices increasingly roam freely between cellular wireless networks and home "wi-fi" networks, at the same time as wi-fi and cellular technology themselves evolve closer together. Wifi is constantly becoming more ubiquitous, and cellular is constantly pushing bandwidth limitations.

The various providers of new broadband services all offer some variation on the same general network design.

Research Questions From Methodology

Addressed in This Overview

• How was this field born and how is it evolving?
• What are the main business models?

Not Yet Addressed

• What are the innovation dynamics in this field? (inputs/outputs, timing of innovation/ disruptive or incremental innovation?)
• How does knowledge flow in this field?
• Is this field replicating models from other fields?
• How many companies?
• How much money do they make or how much money do they “move” in the American economy?
• How important is research from universities in this specific field?
• How important is public funding in this field?
• How important is private funding / venture capital in this field?
• Are there any specific public policies (from agencies, federal or state policies) that give incentives for openness or enclosure?
• What is the cost structure of the field?
• Who are the producers, the buyers, and the users?
• What is the structure of power from the production side and what is the structure of power in the demand side? E.g., who has the power to control production and demand? How is the control distributed?