On the Internet, customers often purchase products or services by giving their credit card information to a supplier, who then submits a debit to the customer's account with a credit card agency. Cyber-cash provides a new alternative, for which no one standard approach is dominant. In one configuration, a customer makes purchases recorded by a financial institution, which are then periodically aggregated for lump-sum billing to a credit card account. In another configuration, a customer pays into an account set up by a company, which could be a traditional financial institution, or some alternative entity, and then makes purchases for which that special account is automatically debited. Some observers believe that cyber-cash will become an important source of competition with traditional financial institutions and will raise new policy challenges for governments.
Digital technology is key to development of advanced information infrastructures and services.
An independent regulatory agency established by the 1934 Communications Act, the United States' principal legislative framework for the communications industries. The FCC's mandate covers interstate and international telecommunications pricing and related issues such as radio frequency spectrum management. Within the 50 states the FCC's jurisdiction has historically been much more limited, with a great deal of power devolving to the states' own Public Utility Commissions. The agency is run by five commissioners nominated by the President and approved by the Congress. A type of wire-line transmission media that converts information into light pulses that travel down hollow glass tubes the diameter of a human hair.