Communications infrastructure regulation and the distribution of control over content

Convergence renders problematic continued application of traditional concepts like universal and public service to address democratic values through communications regulation. The paper proposes an alternative approach based on assessing the impact of regulatory choices affecting communications infrastructure on social distribution of communicative capacities, It offers an approach to developing descriptive models to assess how law, in technological and organizational context, concentrates or distributes control over production and exchange of information in society. Normatively, it suggests how these distributive effects on the flow of information in society affect both individual autonomy and public discourse. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.