Number: RL32232
Title: Bundling Residential Telephone, Internet, and Video Services: Issues for Congress
Authors: Charles B. Goldfarb, Resources, Science, and Industry Division 
Abstract: Technological advances and deregulatory actions now allow consumers to obtain their local and long distance telephone services, their high-speed Internet services, and their video services from competing technologies. Companies that in the past sold a narrow suite of services in relative insulation from competition now are actively entering new service markets and also facing entry by others into their traditional markets. The convergence of previously distinct markets has required companies to seek strategies for holding on to their traditional customers while seeking new ones. One of those strategies is for companies to offer bundles of their "traditional" services and "new" services - typically at a single price that represents a discount off the sum of the prices of the individual services. Today, most incumbent local exchange carriers ("ILECs"), competitive local exchange carriers ("CLECs"), wireless carriers, cable companies, and satellite television companies have bundled service offerings that compete, to varying degrees, with one another. Leaders in both the House and the Senate Commerce Committees have announced that in the 109th Congress they plan to review and reform the 1996 Telecommunications Act (P.L. 104-104) in light of the market convergence that underlies the trend toward bundling.
Pages: 23
Date: Updated February 17, 2004