The bandwidth trading concept emerged in the late 1990's during a very optimistic period in the telecommunications sector. To its advocates, bandwidth trading presented an opportunity to lower transaction costs and to improve risk management practices. To its detractors, bandwidth trading and the associated commoditization of bandwidth were seen as misguided or worse.; The issues raised by bandwidth trading are directly related to the interdisciplinary study of spot and futures markets for a telecommunications commodity that we undertake in this dissertation. From a public policy perspective, these markets potentially affect: (1) interconnection arrangements; (2) transaction efficiencies; (3) risk management; and (4) redundancy strategies for network survivability.; We first develop a taxonomy for contrasting types of telecommunications capacity and access services in the context of potential commodities. We then undertake economic and market viability analyses of two transport services.; We study price uncertainty in competitive, interdependent, spot and risk-neutral futures markets for transport services with guaranteed performance. We develop an economic model of two layer markets (trading market layer, aggregate supplier network layer) to study the impact of demand volatility and network outages on patterns of price uncertainty. We assume a short-term time horizon with uncertain, elastic demand and inelastic supply with network outages. Simulations show that for a given trading market layer, the extent to which price uncertainty propagates beyond those markets directly experiencing the equilibrium perturbation depends on the architecture of the aggregate supplier network layer. Hedgers will require this network information to effectively manage price risk. For a longer time horizon, a speculator could reduce price uncertainty more by accurately forecasting demand growth than by accurately forecasting supply growth.; We draw from discussions with industry practitioners to argue that conditions required for well-functioning telecommunications commodity markets are similar—in concept—to those required for any commodity market. Conditions are: contract fungibility, delivery infrastructure, liquid market, price uncertainty, and trading/clearing system. What is unique about the telecommunications commodity is its combination of: (1) being a service, not a tangible good; (2) rapid delivery requirements; (3) tight coupling of buyer and seller during delivery; and (4) market fragmentation.
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