Introduction: Special Issue on Investment in the Telecommunications Industry Infrastructure

This is the fourth annual special issue of Industrial and Corporate Change devoted to research on telecommunications policy and strategy. The papers in this special issue represent research discussed at the annual conference of the Consortium for Research on Telecommunications Policy and Strategy, held at the University of Michigan Business School in Ann Arbor, during June, 1998. The Consortium seeks to sponsor interdisciplinary scholarship affecting both policy and management in the telecommunication industry. The Consortium has research nodes at the University of Michigan, Northwestern University, University of California at Berkeley and Harvard University. Over the course of the past four years, and with the ongoing generous financial support of the Ameritech Foundation, the Consortium has succeeded in encouraging research from the fields of economics, public policy, corporate strategy and engineering. The 1998 conference reflected the Consortium's success, as « leading researchers from both North America and Europe convened with senior federal and state policymakers and telecommunications industry T management to discuss current research and provide informed direction for 1 ongoing research programs. The common theme of both the Conference and of the papers published | here is investment in telecommunications infrastructure. Within this focal £ context, the theme was purposely kept broad in the hope of encouraging fc scholars to define the actors and substance of investments in tele0 communications that are most salient in today's rapidly changing 1 telecommunications industry. Our logic was driven by the very character of <5 the telecommunications industry. Converging technologies, conflicting and jj changing regulations, and burgeoning markets are hallmarks of today's I telecommunications industry. In such an environment, investment by J © Oxford University Pros 1998