After the Breakup: Assessing the New Post-AT&T Divestiture Era

by Barry Cole

Overview

On January 8, 1982, the AT&T divestiture consent decree was announced. A company with $150 billion in assets—more than General Motors, General Electric, U.S. Steel, Eastman Kodak, and Xerox combined—the country's second largest employer with over a million employees, and the nations most widely held security with over three million shareholders, was to be broken up on the first day of 1984. Many economists, government officials, people in the telecommunications industry, and media observers predicted dire consequences for "the best telephone system in the world."

Years later, some experts claim the divestiture has been a great success. According to present AT&T Chairman and CEO, Robert Allen, long-distance rates have dropped, local rates have not increased as dramatically as predicted, more households are on the network, other long-distance and equipment companies now effectively compete wit hAT&T, and consumers have received more choices in products, better values, and lower prices. Others are far less positive in their evaluation of divestiture's effects.

After the Breakup: Assessing the New Post-AT&T Divestiture Era describes the current state of telecommunications and how the industry has changed in the first decade of divestiture. Drawn from a major project organized by the Center for Telecommunications and Information Studies at Columbia University's Graduate School of Business, this volume offers an objective account of divestiture.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231073226
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	01/23/1991
Pages:	480
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Barry G. Cole is Visiting Director of the Center for Telecommunications and Information Studies at the Columbia Business School, and Adjunct Professor at the Annenburg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania. He has served as founding Deputy Direct of the Annenberg School's Washington Program as well as a consultant to two FCC chairmen, the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications, and the National Science Foundation.

Table of Contents

Preface
About the Contributors
Introduction - Barry G. ColeI. Policymakers and Policy Initiatives
1. Questions and Answers with the Three Major Figures of Divestiture
-William F. Baxter and Charles L. Brown with Stanley M. Besen and Henry Geller
-Judge Harold H. Greene
2. Policy Directions for the Future
-William G. McGowan
-Alfred C. Sikes
-Sharon L. NelsonII. Structural Environment
3. Regulatory and Institutional Change
-Glen O. Robinson
-Philip L. Verveer
-A. Gray Collins
-Edward F. Burke
4. The State of Competition in Telecommunications
-Bruce L. Egan and Leonard Waverman
-Stanford L. Levin
-Lee L. Selwyn
-Nina Cornell
-Martin G. Taschdjian
-John R. WoodburyIII. Service Issues
5. Pricing of Telephone Services
-Roger G. Noll and Susan R. Smart
-Ronald G. Choura
-Dennis L. Weisman
-Susan D. Fendell
6. Service Quality
-Rowland L. Curry
-Jonathan M. Kraushaar
-Robert M. Gryb
-John R. Ake
-Thomas E. Buzas, Stanford V. Berg, and John G. Lynch, Jr.
-Lawrence P. Cole
7. Innovation and New Services
-Walter G. Bolter and James W. McConnaughey
-Elliot E. Maxwell
-Jerrold Oppenheim
-Bailey M. Geeslin
-Thomas W. Cohen
8. Advances in Network Technology
-Marvin A. Sirbu, Jr.
-Bruce C. N. Greenwald
-A. Daniel KelleyIV. Economic Issues
9. Telephone Penetration
-Lewis J. Perl and William E. Taylor
-Bridger M. Mitchell
-Alexander Belinfante
-Gene Kimmelman and Mark N. Cooper
10. Labor, Employment, and Wages
-Wallace Hendricks and Susan C. Sassalos
11. Efficiency and Productivity
-Robert W. Crandall
-M. Ishaq Nadiri
-Gerald W. Brock
-Gerald R. Faulhaber
12. Issues of International Trade
-Kenneth G. Robinson, Jr.
-Eli M. Noam
-Robert T. Blau
-Michael D. Baudhuin
-Timothy J. BrennanIndex

Editorial Reviews

[After the Breakup] represents the best source of information, by top experts, reviewing the events in U.S. telecommunications during the 1980s.... It is, by definition, an important volume. Anyone interested in this field... will have to read this book.

Paul Teske

Nearly 60 contributors present a variety of perspectives on the current state of the US telecommunications industry and assess the impact of the 1982 breakup of AT&T's monopoly on the field. Includes recollections and opinions of three players in the divestiture, and researchers. Based on a project organized by the Center for Telecommunications and Columbia University. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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