Competition In Provision Of Services Research Articles

RobertMacDougall, The people's network: the political economy of the telephone in the gilded age (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014. Pp. 344. 11 figs. ISBN 9780812245691 Hbk. £36/$55)

Robert MacDougall, The people’s network: the political economy of the telephone in the gilded age (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014. Pp. 344. 11 figs. 9780812245691. Hbk £36/$55) The US telephone system was a monopoly of the Bell company in the late nineteenth century; then it briefly was not; and then it was a monopoly again in all but name until the courts forced the breakup in 1984 of what was now AT&T. For about twenty years following the end of Bell’s key patents in 1894, thousands of ‘independent’ and fiercely competitive telephone service providers emerged. By the mid- 1900s Bell had only half of American subscribers and half the cities had at least two competing telephone companies. Within about a decade, however, oligopolistic consolidation under the Bell umbrella was well under way. Robert MacDougall’s The People’s Network recounts the story of the independent era. Although it is not the unknown or forgotten story MacDougall claims – there are earlier general histories and many local ones and there is a Museum of Independent Telephony in Abilene, Kansas – MacDougall’s is the most thorough and deeply researched account. MacDougall credits the independents with democratizing telephone subscription in the US by forcing the Bell companies, most of which sought only business and wealthy residential subscribers, to slash prices and court the masses. MacDougall draws on detailed archival materials, uses the Canadian case at points to highlight the special dynamics of the US experience, and effectively presents case studies of Muncie, Indiana (site of the famed Middletown sociological studies in the 1920s and ‘30s) and of Kingston, Ontario, to same end. He describes the internal evolution of the Bell system, focusing in particular on its takeover in 1879 from the A.G. Bell family by Boston financiers who fixedly believed that telephony was only for elites. He documents the town-by-town battles of local independent providers with Bell – the US government being essentially a bystander until the 1910s – and the national debates in Canada about federal policy. MacDougall’s explanation for the rise and fall of independent telephony in the US presents a struggle between alternative business visions played out in the hard-nosed politics of American towns and small cities. To clear space for his analysis, MacDougall describes previous authors of telephone history – this reviewer included – as naifs misled by decades of Bell public relations. (Much of the last chapter is devoted to Bell’s efforts to manage its historical image.) The mid-twentieth-century telephone system in America was not, MacDougall argues, the inevitable result of a ‘natural monopoly’ nor of consumer demand as some suggest, but the result of political struggles. For a brief period, the vision of a ‘people’s telephone’ flourished in the US, especially in the Midwest region, because local municipalities, which had the power to permit and regulate telephone lines within their borders, fought the Bell companies. They, unlike most Canadian cities, welcomed local entrepreneurs who would compete with Bell. The new enterprises attracted local customers by providing much lower and flat rates, connecting to nearby rural telephone cooperatives, and innovating. Independent, local telephony, argues MacDougall, could have lasted were it not for national politics. The US government undercut the independents by allowing Bell to buy them out or to subvert them. By World War I (when the US government temporarily nationalized the telephone system, hiring on Bell to run it), the independents were doomed and the ‘local, egalitarian’ moment was lost. Some readers may recognize this analysis as an instance of the ‘organizational’ theory of American history in which nineteenth-century local democracy is overridden by twentieth-century institutions of mass society.

Customers, competition and compatibility: a new convergence shaping the Information Age

The technologies of telecommunications have already converged to the point where they can no longer be considered separate, according to the author, Chairman of AT&T. The demand and opportunities for the new services that can be offered using the new technologies should not now be held back by debate on standardization issues. The potential customers of the Information Age expect harmonization, compatibility, simplicity and competition in provision of services.

Do Tips Increase Workers' Income?

The paper constructs a model of service providers who compete in service and labor markets simultaneously to analyze the effects of on hourly wages and total tip-inclusive hourly worker compensation. An increase in the rate reduces hourly wages. Total worker compensation increases at different rates depending on the market structure, market coverage, and employment level; with the exception of price-taking (competitive) service providers where the tip-inclusive hourly income declines with the rate. The paper develops an index of effective tipping that measures the net percentage change in total hourly worker compensation associated with each rate.

Factors Impacting Market Occupancy of Non‐profit Human Service Organizations in the Public Social Service Market: Focused on an Individual Level

This study aims to experientially verify which factors of non‐profit human service organizations affect market sharing activities in the public social service market. Due to market‐oriented government policies, non‐profit human service organizations, which used to enjoy stable financial resources, are now placed in a competitive position to provide their services. It is necessary to find out which organizational factors give a competitive advantage to various service providers in competition, including profit organizations, and apply them to the management and operation of non‐profit human service organizations. This is how this study started. Independent variables were organizational characteristics (organization age, total budget, number of employees), externally oriented culture (development culture, rational culture), and organizational structure (centralization, formalization), while dependent variables were the number of vouchers and total profits. Data was collected from 35 community welfare centers, rehabilitation centers, and senior centers (163 respondents) in Busan, Korea. Multiple regression analysis was conducted for data analysis. As a result of the analysis, the number of vouchers was found to be affected by development culture (+) and formalization (−), and total profit from voucher business was determined by organization age (−), total budget (+), and number of employees (+). Based on the results, this study suggests that non‐profit human service organizations should have an externally oriented culture and a flexible organization system to hold more market share in the public social service market.

Secondary Access Points Placement in Cognitive Radio Networks: A Spatial Game Model With Power Discrimination

This paper studies the problem of determining the locations of secondary access points (SAPs) that belong to two competitive service providers in a certain region. Secondary users (SUs) connect to SAPs according to their preferences. A key feature of the proposed model is that it permits SAPs to set discriminatory powers for SUs, i.e., SUs in different locations will be scheduled with different transmission powers. Profit-maximizing SAPs compete with each other by setting locations and delivered power schedules to attract SUs, taking into account the impact of the revenue obtained and the power cost incurred. To study this competitive situation, an appropriate extensive form game is defined. The game can be viewed as two-staged. The selection of transmission powers by SAPs can be investigated for each pair of locations. Then, the problem of location choice can be analyzed, anticipating what transmission powers will be chosen. We make an important observation: The Nash equilibrium of the game exists, and the global revenue maximum strategy is a Nash equilibrium strategy. Finally, we explore the equilibrium for a circular region having uniform SU distribution and illustrate how to locate SAPs for such a region.

Applications of Data Mining Techniques in Telecom Churn Prediction

In this competitive world, business becomes highly saturated. Especially, the field of telecommunication faces complex challenges due to a number of vibrant competitive service providers. Therefore it has become very difficult for them to retain existing customers. Since the cost of acquiring new customers is much higher than the cost of retaining the existing customers, it is the time for the telecom industries to take necessary steps to retain the customers to stabilize their market value. This paper explores the application of data mining techniques in predicting likely churners and the impact of attribute selection on identifying the churn. It also compares the efficiency of Decision tree and Neural Network classifiers and lists their performances.

Game-theoretic approach for pricing strategy and network selection in heterogeneous wireless networks

User selection for access network is considered to be one of the distinct features of heterogeneous wireless systems, in which users with multi-network interface terminals can freely select access network for better quality of service with lower expense. On the other hand, service providers (SPs) will have to face more intense competition for attracting more subscribers and increasing their profits, which can be achieved through either non-cooperative or cooperative strategies. In this study, the authors propose a unified quantification model for evaluating the access service of heterogeneous systems. The relation between competitive SPs and users is described by different game models, based on general assumptions and practical application scenarios. A novel network selection scheme for maximising user performance–cost ratio (PCR) is proposed. Numerical results demonstrate that all SPs can achieve Nash equilibrium price under non-cooperative game framework and coalition price for cooperative game case to maximise their absolute profits, and the maximal PCR criterion for user network selection scheme is analysed under different scenarios.

Stability of Alliances between Service Providers

Three service providers in competition, try to optimize their quality of service/content level and their service access price. But, they have to deal with uncertainty on the consumers' preferences. To reduce their uncertainty, they have the opportunity to buy information and to build alliances. We determine the Shapley value which is a fair way to allocate the grand coalition's revenue between the service providers. Then, we identify the values of β (consumers' sensitivity coefficient to the quality of service/content) for which allocating the grand coalition's revenue using the Shapley value guarantees the system stability.

A Fuzzy Multi Criteria Decision Making Approach for Vendor Evaluation in a Supply Chain

Manufacturing enterprises face enormous competitive pressures in today’s business environment and to make full use of inside and outside resources in a competitive globalization market, many manufacturers and service providers are seeking a strategic cooperation with suitable vendors to improve their supply chain management (SCM) so that they can concentrate their efforts on their own core business. Hence, there is a necessary to select the best suppliers among various suppliers available. The decision parameters in vendor selection contains vague and uncertainty. The fuzzy theory able to handle this uncertainty, vague, imprecision and subjectivity present in vendor selection process and makes decision process more effective. In the research, we have analyzed an existing system of vendor rating and proposed a better system of vendor rating for the organization. Most organizations use simple additive weighting for vendor rating. However, we have attempted to use the fuzzy decision making method for the purpose. In the proposed approach, linguistic values are used to assess the ratings and weights for these factors. These linguistic ratings can be expressed in trapezoidal or triangular fuzzy numbers. Then, a hierarchy multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) model based on fuzzy theory is proposed to deal with the supplier selection problems in the supply chain system.

Creative restruction – how business services drive economic evolution

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to express the widely underestimated role of business services in driving the growth of the service sector, and the increasing specialization and productivity of the economies.Design/methodology/approachThe authors draw on statistical data and industry reports and link them to the non‐ownership‐concept in service research and the theory of the firm.FindingsBusiness services are the major driver of the service economy. Organizations focus on core competencies and outsource commoditized and non‐core activities in order to free managerial capacity for the entrepreneurial pursuit of opportunities. This in turn drives the specialization and enhanced productivity of economies.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper advances the non‐ownership discussion in service research and integrates it with economic theories of the firm, including the property rights theory, the resource‐based view and the entrepreneurial theory of the firm. This paper makes a conceptual contribution without empirical testing.Practical implicationsImplications for individual businesses include recommendation to focus on core activities and outsourcing of non‐core competencies to competitive business service providers. Here three fundamental value propositions business service providers can offer their clients are identified: reduction of the costs of asset‐ownership (property rights theory); freeing scarce management capacity to focus on high value‐creation opportunities (resource‐based view); and the enhancement of their entrepreneurial agility and leverage (entrepreneurial theory of the firm). Policy implications include a better understanding of the role of business services in wealth creation and the recommendation to create and ensure competitive business services markets that are open to global competition.Originality/valueThe authors provide an explanation for the role of business services as a driving force of economic development and business productivity.

Assessing municipal wireless network projects: the case of Wi-Fi Philadelphia

The City of Philadelphia adopted an ambitious broadband internet plan to provide the city with comprehensive wireless coverage. The decision to adopt this project involved a tradeoff between the benefit of high-speed service to all residents and cost of the project. The project represents breaking a relatively new ground, with few experiences of other government agencies to rely upon for guidance. This paper suggests the use of system dynamics modelling as a means to assess project risk and the result of the model simulation reveals the inherent risk of price manipulation by competitive service providers.

Dynamic Network-Based Discriminatory Pricing

We study the dynamic pricing decisions for competitive network service providers. We assume that each competing firm follows a three-part pricing scheme, which consists of an ongoing membership fee, a usage fee for communications within the networks, and another usage fee for communications across the networks. The difference between the two usage fees is the network-based price discount that allows price discrimination. We study the firms problems as a differential game and establish the optimal pricing policy as a Nash equilibrium feedback strategy depending on only the network sizes (i.e., the number of subscribers). We compare the dynamic network-based discount with the static discount. In the special case of a uniform calling pattern, we find that the firm network-based dynamic discount is always lower than the static discount; we find also that the firm that has a larger network can offer a bigger discount. These results are useful particularly for managers. To get further insights into the dynamic pricing policies, we explore the case of symmetric competition using numerical simulation.

Competition in Local Telecommunications

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 created a framework for competition in local telecommunications. Under its rules and under the jurisdiction of state regulatory authorities, competitive local telephone companies were to gain access to some or all parts of the incumbent's network through known wholesale tariffs and offer retail local telephone service. As customers adopt other technologies for communications–mobile wireless service, broadband for email, messaging, and information retrieval–additional competitive pressures are put on the core voice telephone market. The substitution of usage and access from local telephony to other modes of communication is regarded as intermodal competition and is the subject of this paper. This study concerns local telecommunications competition between incumbent and competitive service providers in the United States. In addition to measuring competition from within the wireline market, we find significant intermodal competitive impacts resulting from wireless and high-speed development. We report empirical results from an econometric model that measures line loss impacts between carriers and the effects of wireless and high-speed services on the wireline market. The paper offers interpretation of the strategic and policy implications of these results.

An MPLS-based architecture for scalable QoS and traffic engineering in converged multiservice mobile IP networks

Mobile Internet connectivity is the fastest growing business in the telecommunications market because of the evolution of digital cellular, portable computing and personal communication technologies, and is playing a vital role in shaping the 21st century communications paradigms. In this scenario, the deployment of innovative wireless data networks, the integration with the Internet and the interworking between different wireless technologies, typically 2.5/3G cellular and Wireless LAN (WLAN), will be challenging objectives for competitive service providers. These factors, combined with the impact that mobile-related traffic may have on the fixed infrastructure, and the convergence of mobile and fixed services, drive towards a rationalization of the resource allocation and management procedures and make it urgent to address quality of service and traffic engineering for mobile data communications at the core transport level. The Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) technology is a versatile solution to address the above problems which delivers a unified control mechanism with connectionless multiprotocol capabilities, running over mixed media infrastructures, and defining evolutionary signalling mechanisms to support both quality of service (QoS) and traffic engineering to allow fine control of traffic flows in the network. The purpose of this paper is to show how MPLS technology can be employed to address all the required functions of tomorrow’s converged wireless/wired networks, from initial IP-level authentication and session control to sophisticated resource reservation, traffic distribution, quality of service and policy management.

Interconnection Agreements in the Telecom Business

Interconnection is defined as commercial and technical arrangements under which service providers connect their equipment, networks and services to enable their customers to have access to the customers, services and networks of other service providers. This paper seeks to understand interconnection among telecommunication networks and the underlying issues related to interconnection. An attempt has been made to present findings based on country case studies done with the aim of identifying prevalent practices in interconnection in different countries. Care has been taken to have both developing as well as developed countries in the sample space that includes UK, Malaysia, USA, Finland, Australia, Brazil, China, Hong Kong, France, India, Mexico and Singapore. The transformation of the telecommunications market is occurring in several dimensions - in the changing structure of demand, in the convergence of services, and in the changing structure of the industry due to introduction of competition. Convergence between telecommunications, broadcasting, cable television, and the Internet has happened at a very rapid pace. Mobile telephony has become a substitute for fixed telephony in some countries. There has been a fundamental shift in the industry from monopolistic to a multi-operator environment. Resale of network services is also becoming an increasingly important business as separating network ownership from service delivery becomes operationally and commercially viable. Telecommunications is now clearly a multi-product sector with several alternative service delivery mechanisms that permit competition in service provision. Thus, the regulatory agenda has shifted from minimizing the price of subscribing to local telephone service or maintaining cross-subsidy to managing multiple issues related to competition, entry, pricing and cross-subsidies. In such a scenario, interconnection between networks and between different service providers assumes utmost importance.

Policy Design for Local Innovation: The Effects of Competition in Public Schooling

AbstractState governments have recently adopted many policies creating competition in service provision. These policies typically are expected to reduce costs and improve quality through organizational innovation. I present an analysis of one such initiative—the creation of charter schools. Using evidence from a survey-based study comparing charter schools and traditional public schools, I explore the relationship between competition and organizational innovation. I find that competition does appear to promote innovative local practices. But the evidence also suggests that competition can limit communication within the practitioner community, which, in turn, can stifle the diffusion of innovative ideas. Thus, policy design for local innovation may be more effective when competition is augmented with state-level strategies that promote inter-organizational cooperation and learning.

A 10-Step Program to Successful Utility Deregulation For Building Owners and Managers

With the passage of the Energy Policy Act of 1992, the process of deregulating the electric industry was begun. Because of this historic change toward a competitive arena, the utilities, their customers, and energy service providers have begun to reexamine their relationships. How will building owners, each with varying degrees of sophistication, choose their suppliers of these services? Who will supply them? What will it cost? How will it impact the tenants/occupants? How will the successful players bring forward the right product to the marketplace to stay profitable? And how will more and better energy purchases, commissioning, O and M, and energy services improve the bottom line? This article reviews the historic relationships between utilities, their customers, and energy service providers, and the tremendous possibilities for doing business in new and different ways. Of particular concern to building owners is who will be best able to supply these services in the future and if they will improve quality and reduce costs.

Service Delivery By a Trade Union—Does It Pay?

ABSTRACTA changing socio-economic environment and competition have led trade unions to extend their role and become service providers. This paper examines some of the issues of service delivery which arise. Four central implications are discussed: the trade union's need (1) to adapt to the competitive service provider's market, (2) to enlarge its consumer body, (3) to become an employer of workers, and (4) to expand its interests with business establishments and authorities over non-union matters. The paper focuses on the General Federation of Labour in Israel (the Histadrut), and its comprehensive health insurance scheme (Kupat Holim). The scheme is provided to all union members and their families as part of union membership. Nonetheless, alternative service systems seem sufficiently attractive for many union members to consider ‘deserting’ their union. The union depends on its members—consumers—to secure its broad base, universalistic image, source of income and legitimacy. Trying to attract consumers causes the union to bend some of its principles. Ultimately, service provision forces the union to adopt characteristics alien to, and even contradicting, its traditional, militant role as an organiser of labour.