The US West Bandwidth Dataset (UWBD) contains public tariff data on rates and demand for interstate bandwidth in use in the historical US West service area from 1990 to 2000. The source data for the UWBD are interstate access price-cap tariff filings made publicly at the FCC. The UWBD compiles and organizes demand (units sold) and rates (prices) for trunking and special access interstate services from the rate detail files. The source data have been augmented with service, bandwidth, and other descriptive tags. These descriptive tags are not official and should be considered merely aids to exploratory analysis of the data.
This dataset is intended to facilitate exploratory analysis of bandwidth prices and demand, to spur development of new techniques for analyzing price trends, and to foster better informed public policy deliberation. This is dataset neither an official nor authoritative compilation. The official FCC public record of tariff filings is the FCC's Electronic Tariff Filing System (ETFS). Annual access filings for 2003 to 2009 are currently available online. One way to find annual access filings is to search by company name for June 10 to June 20 for the filing year of interest. The files for 2003 to 2009 in the source data compilation are named by their file description on ETFS.
The historical US West service area consists of customer premises in parts of 14 Western and Mid-Western states: Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Idaho, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. Some relatively small changes may have taken place in the service areas represented in the annual filings from 1990 to 2009. Qwest is the current name of the company that incorporated the US West historical service area.
The UWBD is a tab-delimited text file. The first line in file contains the field names. The ordering of the records in the source data, as well as header records (which have no demand and price data), are important for interpreting records. The UWBD include record sequence numbers that allow browsing the records in the source sequence so as to better understand service specifications.
All rate detail records for US West from 1992 to 2009 are in another dataset, the US West Price and Demand dataset (UWPD). That dataset lacks the detailed coding of trunking and special access elements available here for 1990 to 2000. The UWPD replaces a prior, similar dataset the includes only special access and trunking elements from 2001 to 2009.
The source data files and related FCC proceedings make for more informed use of the UWBD. The rate-detail source files used to the construct the UWBD are available in the rate detail archive. The source data files are more authoritative than the UWBD. They should be used to interpret, verify, and validate UWBD data as appropriate for your particular use. Because source data for 1990 and 1991 are currently available only in paper copy, those years are not included in the electronic source archive. After 2000, FCC pricing flexibility and forbearance orders, and associated Qwest actions, removed some services from price caps. The fundamental order was the FCC’s Fifth Report and Order and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Pricing Flexibility and Other Access Charge Reforms (August 27, 1999). See also subsequent related FCC orders, e.g. order on petition for waiver of pricing flexibility rules (Apr. 20, 2007).
UWBD data file:
Related data:
Work using these data:
A. Field Specifications
|
Field name |
Source |
Description |
|
year |
a |
year of annual access filing |
|
ln |
a |
record sequence number (includes some non-integer values) |
|
lid |
s |
line identifier, if any, from source file |
|
lidm |
a |
match to lid in record from previous year (sparse) |
|
basket |
a |
beginning in 2000, separate trunking ("tr) and special access ("sa") baskets established |
|
bandwidth |
a |
bandwidth of channel in megabits per second |
|
service-cat |
a |
groups similar services (e.g. DS1, DS3), drawing mainly upon source file definitions |
|
DS3-type |
a |
electrical (e), optical (o), radio (r), or directory assistance (da) |
|
DS3-cap |
a |
capacity of DS3 arrangement |
|
DS3-unit |
a |
s - service arrangement, 1st mile; sm - service arrangement, additional miles; e - activation of DS3 in service arrangement |
|
rate-element |
a |
categories types of rates within a service category; rates for rate elements other than "NRC" or "other" are monthly rates |
|
IO-distance |
a |
upper limit for inter-office distance band |
|
term |
a |
term/plan requirement for rate element (text field) |
|
term-months |
a |
term simplified to number of months for term plans (number) |
|
zone |
a |
zone (1,2, or 3) for which rate element applies (no zone implies universally available) |
|
usoc |
s |
Universal Service Order Codes, also known as Uniform Service Order Codes (sparse) |
|
service |
s/a |
service name given in the rate detail file, augmented using sequence header information; sparse for 1990-91, for which no electronic source available |
|
demand |
s |
previous year's demand (base period demand); for elements charged monthly, it's the sum of charged elements across months |
|
crate |
s |
current price for rate element, existing about June 15 of year of filing |
|
prate |
s |
proposed price for rate element, proposed to go into effect about July 1 of year of filing |
|
crev-c |
s |
revenue from rate element measured as current price times base period demand (yearly revenue), with corrections to source data |
|
prev-c |
s |
revenue from rate element measured as proposed price times base period demand (yearly revenue), with corrections to source data |
Notes: The source column indicates whether the field is directly from the source data (“s”) or an added classification of the source data (“a”). For the field “DS3-unit”, service arrangements (coded “s”) and per mile (code “sm”) records for channel terminations are not associated with bandwidth values (see field “bandwidth”). Bandwidth in use is calculated from the records with DS3-unit coded for a bandwidth element (“e”). Service arrangements with capacity 1 DS3 (field DS3-cap=1) count for bandwidth (coded with DS3-unit="se").
Some of the data categorizations have been revised since the statistics reported in Galbi (2001a) and Galbi (2001b).
B. Rate Element Categorizations (rate-element)
Within these unofficial, tentative definitions, "special access" means a transmission service other than that for public switched voice. “Trunking” means a transmission service for public switched voice service.
|
CT |
channel termination: fixed monthly charge for special-access connection between customer point of presence and service provider's multi-connection network (wire centers, multi-degree nodes) |
|
CMFxx-yy / CMFxxo |
channel milage fixed: fixed monthly charge for special-access link within service provider's multi-connection network. Code xx-yy provides the applicable distance band; xxo indicates xx miles and over. |
|
CMPMxx-yy / CMPMxxo |
channel mileage per mile: monthly charge per mile for service provider network special-access link within service provider's multi-connnection network. Code xx-yy provides the applicable distance band; xxo indicates xx miles and over. |
|
EF |
entrance facility: fixed monthly charge for trunking connection between customer point of presence and service provider's multi-connection network (wire centers, multi-degree nodes) |
|
DTFxx-yy / DTFxxo |
direct trunking fixed: fixed monthly charge for trunking link within service provider's multi-connection network. Code xx-yy provides the applicable distance band; xxo indicates xx miles and over. |
|
DTPMxx-yy / DTPMxxo |
direct trunking mileage per mile: monthly charge per mile for service provider network trunking link within service provider's multi-connnection network. Code xx-yy provides the applicable distance band; xxo indicates xx miles and over. |
|
NRC |
non-recurring charge, but not all non-recurring charges are thus coded |
|
other |
other type of rate element, including some non-recurring charges (NRC) |
C. Service Categorizations (service-cat)
These service definitions are not mutually exclusive. In general, services have been categorized as seems most appropriate for the service heading and source organization in the source file.
|
audio |
historically old audio transport service, e.g. for radio stations |
|
CCS |
Common Channel Signaling service |
|
DA |
directory assistance line; all such lines may not be thus coded |
|
dark fiber |
unlit fiber strands |
|
DDS |
Digital Data Service, a historically early digital connectivity service |
|
DIV |
diversity service, an option to increase reliability of a connection |
|
DS1 |
a historically early dedicated 1.544 Mb connection |
|
DS3 |
a historically early dedicated 44.736 Mb connection |
|
HDTV |
HDTV transport service |
|
ICC |
interconnection charge |
|
MBSS |
Managed Bandwidth SONET Service |
|
Metallic |
early low-speed signalling system, often used for alarm system connectivity |
|
misc |
services not otherwise categorized |
|
SHNS |
Self-Healing Network Services |
|
SRAS |
Special Routing Access Service (emergency service) |
|
SRS |
SONET Ring Services |
|
SST |
Synchronous Shared Transport (Qwest desc: two-point, SONET-based, shared private line) |
|
SVDS |
Simultaneous Voice and Data Service ("simultaneous voice and full-duplex data transmission of up to 19.2 kbit/s over a single, non-loaded subscriber cable pair") |
|
Telegraph |
telegraph connections |
|
TST |
Tandem Switched Transport |
|
VG |
Voice-Grade connectivity |
|
video |
historically old video transport service, e.g. for television stations |
In service descriptions, the term SHARP is an abbreviation for Self-Healing Alternate Route Protection (provisioned on fiber optics, provides separate facility path).