Universal
Access and Local Commercial Internet Markets
Tom
Downes and Shane Greenstein
Abstract
Concern over the potential need to redefine universal
service to account for Internet-related services and other combinations
of communication and computing motivates this study of the geographic
spread of commercial Internet Service Providers (ISPs), the leading
suppliers of Internet access in the United States. The paper characterizes
the location of 40,000 access points, local phone numbers offered
by commercial ISPs, in the fall of 1997. Markets differ widely in
their structure, from competitive to unserved. More than 92 percent
of the U.S. population has easy access to a competitive commercial
Internet access market, while approximately 4.5 percent of the U.S.
population has costly access. Urban/rural coverage must be understood
in the context of the different strategies of national/local providers.
Tom Downes, Department
of Economics, Tufts University
Shane Greenstein, Kellogg Graduate School of Management,
Northwestern University
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