Book Review: Structure and Performance of the U. S. Communications Industry

• Date: 01 September 1972
• Published date: 01 September 1972
• DOI: 10.1177/0003603X7201700312
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

BOOK REVIEWS 953

Kurt

Borchardt, Structure and Performance of the U. S.

Communications Industry, Boston: Division of Research

Graduate School of Business Administration,

Harvard

University (1970), 180 pp.,

$6.00.

It

is generally agreed

that

transportation

industry

per-

formance has been disappointing. Communications, as a

younger regulated industry with some similar problems

(intermodal competition, atechnology which changes more

rapidly than regulating institutions,

and

overlapping regu-

latoryauthority)

may be approaching asimilar fate.

In

an

attempt to

avert

this misfortune Borchardt examines the

process which is shaping the industry's structure and per-

formance and then offers some suggestions

that

hopefully

will improve

its

prospects.

The book is divided into three

parts:

A

short

introduction

and summary;

Part

I,

"The

Evaluation of the

Present

U. S.

Communications System"; and

Part

II,

"Processes Which

Determine the

Structure

of the Communications

Industry."

The

industry

is divided into two segments: Intercommunica-

tions (two-way communication between individuals

and/or

machines) and mass communication (information dissemina-

tion from acentral point to a large group of individuals).

In

Part

Iseparate chapters are devoted to the development,

technology and

current

institutional

and

industrial

structure

of each segment.

In

the intercommunications chapter topics such as AT&T's

relation to Western Union, Western Electric and the inde-

pendent telephone companies; the Carterphone case (in which

it was decided

that

AT&T could not prohibit foreign attach-

ments to its communication system as long as those attach-

ments were useful and not harmful to the network);

private

and public microwave systems; overseas intercommunica-

tions;

and

Comsat

are

introduced. Matters such as the crea-

tion and growth of R.C.A., cable television and its relation to

the independent telephone companies

and

pay

television

are

discussed in the mass communications chapter.