This book is based on the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference which reports on research into telecommunications policy issues. While the conference is now a respectable 23 years old, this is only the second printed edition of selected papers. A new law, the Telecommunications Act of 1996, accelerated the process of integration in the communication industry and made major revisions to the Communications Act of 1934 that increase the incentive for integration within the industry. Although the papers in this volume were written prior to the passage of the new law, their importance is merely enhanced by it. They deal with fundamental, complex policy problems that arise when previously separate segments of the telecommunications industry are integrated, rather than specific regulatory rules that are likely to be changed under the new law. With the passage of this law, the timeframe for developing appropriate policies for an integrated industry has been shortened. Changes expected to occur over a period of several years will now likely occur much more rapidly. These papers provide insights to help guide the transition in the industry.

Divided into five parts, this volume:

* deals with problems of transforming local exchange telephone service from a monopoly in each geographical area to an interconnected competitive network of networks,

* considers the pricing problems that arise in an integrated network carrying traffic of different types across multiple service providers,

* examines the problem of achieving interoperability in complex networks,

* considers issues of intellectual property that arise in expected integrated networks of the future, and

* discusses electronic publication of scholarly journals, copyright protection, and the applicability of copyright law in the digital age.