The electric industry's gyrations are giving some telecommunications experts that old familiar feeling
A timeline of the past 20 years would characterize an American telecommunications policy revolution dominated by alternating periods of market structure and access. It also would reveal that this cycle is not a casual phenomenon but the result of procompetitive regulatory and judicial decisions that spawn equal and open access issues whose resolution is, in turn, a source of additional market structure issues. Passage of the Energy Policy Act of 1992 has started a similar cogenerative process in the electricity industry. How can electric utility executives and regulators use the lessons of the telecommunications industry to deal with emerging transmission issues in the electricity industry They can begin by realizing that multiple forms of mandatory transmission access may be new to electric utilities, but they are second nature to telephone local exchange companies (LECs). For example, LECs have been providing local access services to equipment manufacturers and long-distance companies for over a decade. These firms also are deploying local access services for the enhanced and information-services providers under the rubric of open network architecture (ONA). This full range of access services might soon be commonplace in the electricity industry, too, as exempt wholesale generators (EWGs) enter the wholesale power markets.
- OSTI ID:
- 5996728
- Journal Information:
- Public Utilities Fortnightly; (United States), Vol. 131:12; ISSN 0033-3808
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Competitive electric market is hearing subject
Optical communications to the home with electric power?