Research On The Instituional Changes Of Telecom-Legislation System And The Development Of Telecommunication Technology Of America

From immature to advancement, the evolution of telecommunication technologies has been through different stages.The technological innovations have changed the nature of telecom-economy and the market itself tremendously. The new entrants, arising from the joint effort of technological innovation and market demand, came to challenge the old rules, and, therefore, forced the legislation system to adjust to those changes.The evolutional path of America’s telecommunication is a miniature of world’s telecommunication history. America’s telecommunication industry has been through consecutive stages of coaxial cable, microwave, satellite, optical fiber and mobile communication from the standpoint of technology.Regarding the market statuses, it has evolved from the patent monopoly to free market in the earlier stages, later on to the government-controlled monopoly, then again open to competition until now. On the level of legislation and regulation, it was under the governance of each state initially, until the passage of Communications Act of 1934, the first federal telecom-legislation under which the decades-long anti-monopoly suits between Ministry of Justice and AT&T took place and led to the bankruptcy of the latter, following by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and the innovations on internet legislation system and regulatory models in the 21st century.In this paper, the term telecommunication refers to the definition in the U.S. Telecommunications Act, according to which it consists of two parts, telecommunication services and information services. By studying the evolution of America’s Telecom system, comparing the different stages on factors such as market access, charges, competition, universal service, integration and innovation in the telecommunications industry, the author analyzes the primary technological and economic drivers behind and concludes as follows:(ⅰ) Innovation of telecom technologies is the driving force to the evolution of legislation and regulatory system, and it takes effect through its impact over the telecom market, (ⅱ) there is a hysteresis to the change of telecom legislation system after the technological development; therefore modifications should be made continuously to accommodate the development of the telecom technologies. Along with the idea that technological change drives social, economical change, and institutional changes over the telecom-legislation, the author elaborates the idea that the society would enter the information civilization from the industrial civilization. Further more, it emphasizes the core value of free exchange in the information economy, puts forward the idea of promoting the consensus of all parties and strengthening openness and cooperation to accommodate the integrated information society in the future, and leads to a new telecommunication legislation system---network rules---for the future information society, namely the information civilization. At the end of the paper lessons that China, on the way of making a better telecom-legislation system, can learn from the history and practice of Amercia’s telecom-legislation are given.