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Bundling communications policy for the new US administration
Bundling communications policy for the new US administration
Anne W. Branscomb
The U S A d o e s n o t h a v e a coherent framework for communications policy. The a u t h o r sets o u t w h a t s h o u l d b e t h e prime concerns of a c o m m u n i c a t i o n s policy aimed a t s e r v i n g a p l u r a l i s t i c s o c i e t y in an 'electronic age'. She describes the current situation, in which
responsibilities for communications are divided over a wide range of government organisations. The C o m m u n i c a t i o n s A c t of 1 9 3 4 is under review, a n d t h e a u t h o r f o c u s e s o n major aspects of t h e debate, a n d lists s u i t a b l e areas for government involvement. She c o n c l u d e s by s t r e s s i n g t h e need for the new US a d m i n i s t r a t i o n t o provide a c o h e r e n t s t r u c t u r e for communications policy making to
Communications capability represents power in any society. For an authoritarian system it is the means by which control is retained. In a democratic system it is the essence of shared responsibility. Therefore, the health and maintenance of the communications system is crucial to the survival of democracy - a fragile form of government at best in a world dominated by authoritarian regimes. Yet Americans, who live in the healthiest and most powerful democracy economically, suffer from a remarkable myopia when it comes to looking at the systemic problems of their communications system. Indeed, the U S A seems unable to cope with any rational and/or centralised look at communications policy! There are three reasons for this resistance to the policy-making function: •
encourage the essential free flow of information.
A n n e W. B r a n s c o m b is w i t h Kalba B o w e n Associates, 5 Hidden Oak Lane, A r m o n k , NY 1 0 5 0 4 , USA.
•
• ~Tom Whitehead was Director of the Office of Telecommunications Policy, Executive Office of the President, in the Nixon administration.
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The First Amendment, which was written at a time when authoritarian governments were censoring speech rather effectively, and, therefore, a major concern was to prevent the government from restraining the free flow of information initiated by individuals or the gatekeepers chosen to select information for distribution, the journalists and editors. Consequently, very little has developed in a structural way, except in broadcasting (where the rules of the game were modified for adaptation to the scarcity of spectrum space), to cope with the roadblocks executed by conglomerated economic power which aggregates and controls a few entities for distribution of information. There are many people, economists and scholars as well as ordinary people and their political leaders, who genuinely believe that (a) the government which governs least is best, (b) the economy which is least regulated is healthiest, and (c) the marketplace of ideas which is least manipulated permits the freest flow of information. The most recent history of entry of centralised government into systemic analysis of communications policy has resulted in pressures which were perceived to be politically rather than philosophically motivated, such as Tom Whitehead's pursuit of localism in the US Public Broadcasting System I and Spiro Agnew's attack on the network news. Thus, the actors were T E L E C O M M U N I C A T I O N S POLICY June 1977
Bundlhlg communications polio,for the new US administration
themselves unable to persuade their audiences that they were trying to perfect a communications system in which all participants would have equitable access in putting their messages into the public stream of consciousness. Consequently, the nation arrives in the last quarter of the 20th century blessed with so much hardware, portending such proliferation of message-generating machinery that the wildest Walter Mitty dreams could be satisfied, but without the framework of communications policy in which to spin the various webs of software. Remarkably, the USA approaches the 21st century with communications toys to dazzle the most imaginative minds, and give sight and sound to their most creative ideas, but with an inherited political garment designed to prevent 17th century British kings from silencing their subjects! The irony is that the nation is beset with economic policy, foreign policy, agricultural policy, ad infinitum, but is without a coherent communications policy. Yet communications policy is the thread by which all other policies are not only interwoven but released to the public for ferment, discussion, and decision. How can a communications policy be put together for a democratic society?
Principles The first task is to deal with the realities of what a rational policy would be had the First Fathers been writing the Bill of Rights in 1977 rather than 1787. For a Bill of Communications Rights which might serve a pluralistic society of 220 million people in an electronic age of technical diversity, the following should be prime concerns: equitable access to the system; non-discriminatory rate structure; privacy for private messages; accuracy for public messages; the right to correct inaccurate messages circulated by third parties; geographically dispersed points of entry; shared use to husband resources and reduce costs; freedom of choice for the receipt of information; freedom of choice of mode of transmission; and the right to prohibit third parties from distributing proprietary information without permission and/or compensation of the source. Note that none of these is intended to control the content of messages prior to distribution except where proprietary rights or privacy are involved. Moreover, they are intended to encourage the free flow from and to widely dispersed locations with a nondiscriminatory rate structure. To encourage national access, this would mean distance-insensitive pricing, although types of messages would necessarily have different rate structures depending upon such diverse uses as delivery of television signals as compared with handwritten letters or store and forward computer-processed digital signals.
Current situation 2 For a detailed breakdown of telecommunications policy responsibilities in the USA, see Paul Polishuk, 'Telecommunications policy making and institutions of the US government', Telecommunications Policy, Vol 1, No 1, 1976, pp 52-67.
Second, what institutions exist 2 and how can the planning process be centralised for optimum freedom of communications flow? At present, communications policy in the US government is extremely fragmented.
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3Coordination of international policy is particularly troublesome as the suppliers of communications hardware and software lie almost entirely within the private sector. Representation in negotiations, ie international tariff rates, facilities planning, transfer of technology as well as direct broadcast satellites, has been difficult. It took six months to put together representatives of the Defense and State Department, United States Information Agency (USIA), the OTP and the FCC to look at the political overtones.of international spectrum allocation. Private industry took the initiative in pressing DOS to create an ad hoc I nteragency Task Force on transborder data flow restrictions. Divided interests in this area required representatives of eight agencies: DOS, FCC, OTP, NSF, OT, as well as the National Bureau of Standards, The Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Office of Management and Budget.
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The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent regulatory commission, which licenses radio and television delivery, regulates record and voice common carriers, and polices the entry of new technologies into the marketplace (such as satellites, cable television, and communications processing). The Office of Telecommunications Policy (OTP) in the Executive Office of the President evolved from the need to remove the management of spectrum allocated for government use (more than 50% of capacity) from the control of the military establishment. The Office of Telecommunications (OT) in the Department of Commerce, in addition to operating a laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, conducts research in new technologies of communications and operates as the research arm of the OTP for economic, technical, and policy analysis. The National Institute of Education, spawned by the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, has funded educational research and interactive instructional demonstrations. The Emergency School Aid Act administered by the Office of Education of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW), funds television programmes using racial minorities for design and production. The Government Services Administration procurement policies guide the purchase of millions of dollars worth of telecommunications and computing equipment. A coherent policy could stimulate innovative development while providing a substantial market for the purchase of telecommunication equipment from private industry. The National Science Foundation (NSF) funds the RANN (Research Applied to National Needs) Program which has produced vast quantities of statistical and analytical data to provide insight into the operation of the national communication system as well as its impact on social values. The Department of Housing and Urban Development has taken little or no interest in telecommunications planning for community development. Yet, as owner by default of some of the major housing developments with some of the few interactive cable television systems, it has an opportunity to use these facilities for experimental development. Moreover, it is funding some television programmes to inspire confidence in the inner cities. The State Department has little positive capability or interest in telecommunications policy as such, but has very real negative influence, as recently exhibited through the demise of the OTP plan for a Pacific Basin Conference. Furthermore, as the department responsible for international negotiation, it takes a leading role in organising the US representation at the World Administrative Radio Conference where radio spectrum space is allocated among the nations. 3 The Defense Communications Agency (DCA) manages all the communication facilities of the three military services which represent the largest single investment in communications equipment and services in the country, thus stimulating production and setting requirements for performance in the communications industry. The Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) of the Congress, a recent entry into the communications policy confusion sweepstakes, has concentrated primarily on rural communications. At the prodding of Senators Talmadge and Magnuson, the OTA recently funded a
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Bundling communications policyfor the new US administration
4 The study and conference are reviewed in Telecommunications Policy, Vol 1, No 2, pp 164-169. s Meanwhile John F. McLaughlin, Director of Strategic Planning for the USPS, in a presentation to the Harvard Program on Information Policy on 18 October 1976, observed that now may be an optimum time in the history of the postal service, because so many of its delivery staff are approaching retirement. This may be one way to cut costs, but it may not be the best way to deliver social security cheques to grandmothers in rural areas, nor may it be a satisfactory resolution of the job loss for the children of 'postpeople' who are reaching the breadwinning a g e as fast as their parents retire.
study and a conference on rural communication jointly with OTP to discuss demonstration projects to explore development and use of cable television systems in rural areas. 4 More recently, the Congress has voted to fund an effort on the implications of the information society, in which the participants will be from the OTA and this is currently in the process of organisation. The National Technical Information Service (NTIS) of the US Department of Commerce provides on-line information services of a variety of kinds and is actively lobbying to change the exclusion from copyright protection for such services funded by the federal government. Such policy is contrary to long-standing freedom of information funded by federal sources, but is consistent with the pressure to recapture public investment through user fees (as applied to recreational areas, for example) and as permitted by an exception to copyright law for the Standard Reference Data Program operated by the National Bureau of Standards. Such internal policies within the federal agencies are under review by an interagency committee under the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Science and Technology. There is another independent Commission o n Libraries and Information Science (CLIS) to study the changing role of libraries with new technologies of communication, storage and retrieval of information. This is housed within the HEW complex, and has substantial overlapping interests with the Commission on New Technological Uses of Copyright (CONTU), which has the specific mandate to advise Congress solely on revisions of the copyright law, whereas CLIS is charged with responsibility for the health of the public library system. There is room, however, for a substantial fight brewing between the interests of the information industries which are proprietary and the interests of the librarians in free distribution of a public good. There is a Privacy Commission which is undertaking to establish standards for the protection of individuals about whom information is ascertained, processed, and stored in large data banks within the government; but this is only a first step in trying to cope with vast data banking of information and sale thereof by the private sector. The Postal Service, which does meet two of my proposed criteria for measuring national performance - equitable entry and distanceinsensitive pricing - is in a state of disarray and dissolution. Noting substantial loss of the economic base to faster delivery services and electronic funds transfer (over 50% of first class service is transfer of financial information), the Congress has merely set up another commission to study and report on USPS problems. 5 Another commission, the Electronic Fund Transfer Commission, is looking at banks, credit unions, and retail merchandisers who, with the national credit card companies (Amexco, Bankamericard, Carte Blanche, Diners, Master Charge) are jockeying for their share of the retail credit (a multibillion dollar business) oblivious to the problem they are creating for the postal union whose jobs and services are in jeopardy and/or rural mail recipients whose service is not costeffective. At the same time the courts are having to cope with such definitions as CBCT (Consumer Bank Computer Terminals) and interpretation of banking laws which may inhibit or impede the electronic flow of information about credit and financial transactions for the foreseeable future without adequate technical expertise to
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5in early February 1977, the FCC approved an application by the Public Broadcasting Service to construct and operate a main origination earth station in Fairfax, Virginia, near Washington, DC and earth receive only saucers for 13 noncommercial public television stations around the country to operate a satellite interconnection service using three transponders leased from Western Union. This is the lead application for a system which will ultimately interconnect the 2 6 8 public television stations and 2 0 2 public radio stations with a proposed five regional transmit stations in addition to the master transmitter in Washington (Broadcasting, 14 February 1977, pp 99100). 7 Furthermore, the satellite interconnect might just as easily deliver grandmother's social security cheque - especially in the middle of the night when public broadcasting viewers are asleep anyway. a This was reaffirmed in the Rostow Report, released after some prodding at the end of the Johnson administration. (Final Report of the President's Task Force on National Communications Policy, 7 December 1968). 9 The proposed "Consumer Communications Reform Act" is discussed in Richard E. Wiley, 'The US communications consumer and monopoly supply - the FCC position on the Consumer Communications Reform Act', John D. deButts, 'The US communications consumer and FCC policies - the AT&T position on the Consumer Communications Reform Act', and Leland L. Johnson, 'A review of the FCC and AT&T positions', Telecommunications Policy, Vol 1, No 2, 1977, pp 99-124.
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understand the hardware and certainly without adequate comprehension of the policy implications. The Social Security Administration is merrily transferring social security cheques to banks by electronic delivery made without the slightest concern about the impact on the postal services. The Internal Revenue Service applies different methods of capitalisation and depreciation for telecommunications equipment which may discourage innovation in the rate-regulated utilities while tax reformers, eager to close loopholes, may inhibit the formation of capital in the unregulated telecommunication companies as well. Meanwhile, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and its ungrateful stepchild the Public Broadcasting Service are engaged in a debilitating internecine fight while putting into place a satellite system of interconnection to deliver 'Athens to the Pedernales'. 6 However, no one has considered where or how all the Olympian quality software is to be produced to programme more channels to its affiliates, or how the affiliates are to overcome the technical limitations and poor quality of one very weak U H F signal, v At the same time Bell, and the 1600 unaffiliated independent telephone companies (which can hardly be looked upon as a completely private industry, being a regulated monopoly providing a very necessary and public service) have mounted a substantial, and to some convincing, argument that any other entry into the telecommunications system would be deleterious to the national integrated telecommunication system which was the stated goal of the Communications Act of 1934. 8
Rewriting the Communications Act Since then there has been both a communications revolution and a policy void - except for isolated abortive and deleterious sorties into programming control by the OTP and the CPB - along with much ad hoc decision making concerning competition at certain points in the common carrier area by the FCC. Thus the nation finds itself the middle of the most fantastic proliferation of new electronic communications services ever witnessed and with hardly a soul in the Carter team in place to cope with the magnitude of the problem. Fortunately, all is not lost, for the new Chairman of the Subcommittee on Communications, Lionel VanDeerlin, has announced (with the help of a small, young, but talented and enthusiastic staff) that the Committee is going to rewrite the Communications Act of 1934. 9 The reverberations from the Senate suggest that this effort may be overambitious and premature, but it must be d o n e - and the sooner the dialogue is started the better.
Defining roles But what will the new Act accomplish? Fortunately, many of the actors are beginning to see the historical drama about to unfold and are putting their acts together. Certainly the Bell system, at the peak of euphoria and public appreciation in its centennial year, has dropped its bill into the hopper - which argues that the telephone is at the centre of the electronic communications universe and all good things necessarily follow from that proposition. On the other hand, it can equally be argued that the telephone is one of many services
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10 Indeed, the Bell Company has lost this argument several times in the past both in a judicially mediated and market-oriented context (eg the 1956 consent decrees, and the failure of the public to appreciate the utility of a common carrier broadcast service). 11The Domestic Council Committee on the Right of Privacy, under the Chairmanship of Vice President Rockefeller, issued a report during the summer of 1976, which is the most comprehensive recent review of the converging concerns at the interface between information policy and tetecommurfications issues. The report makes a strong case for a more unified approach to such issues and strong leadership within the White House complex. The OT has also called for the formulation of a national telecommunications agenda which would address the technical economic and spectrum management problems. This more modest proposal is a step in the right direction, since many of the participants as well as the outside experts are becoming more and more apprehensive about having understood the problems emerging from the communications revolution well enough to produce any comprehensive solutions.
which can be served by the electronic highway: just because the telephone was one of t h e first, and better than its closest competitor, Western Union, in putting into place an integrated company which provided its own interconnections and equipment may not be sufficient reason to give it a monopoly on all potential services which might be transmitted over the national interconnected system. ~° The anti-Bell forces have organised themselves into a lobbying group entitled the Ad Hoc Committee for Competitive Telecommunications (ACCT) which will put forward the argument for a truly competitive communications system in the private line services and peripheral customer premise equipment. The Information Industries Association and the libraries and the publishers are busily trying to educate themselves about the impact of on-line computerised information systems and electronic text in order to determine whether the report of the Commission on New Technological Uses of Copyright (CONTU) will be protective of existing technologies or promotive of the new and resolve whether they can and should be both. The Carnegie Foundation, at the request of various sections of the public, is beginning to consider the possibility of a new commission to address the further development of the public broadcasting system and related technologies such as cable or satellite carriers. The Aspen Institute Program on Communication has initiated a year-long study of the telecommunications policy planning apparatus of the federal government, looking towards some reorganisation recommendations which will streamline and coordinate government decision making in this field. ~ NASA, which has spent over $60 billion in public investment has in the process provided a substantial amount of public education about space. However, the educational process has been funnelled through network news programmes and special coverage by and large, rather than through the public broadcasting system. And much of the cost of transmission has been underwritten by corporate advertising, although the major investment has been public funds in the space programme which provided the footage shown by the networks. Now that space development has been demoted to a lower priority on the public agenda, NASA is looking for ways to use its vast equipment for public use. One way has been to fund research in the ATS-6 satellite over the Rocky Mountain Region, and over the Indian Ocean. Some of this has been funded cooperatively with the OTP of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. More recently, there is in the works a marriage of corporate, government and public service users in which Hughes Aircraft proposes to launch a satellite • from the space shuttle, launch costs of which will be donated by NASA. The satellite is to be given to the Public Service Satellite Consortium for a matching contribution of about 20% from its aggregated public service users which range from local school boards to hospital and medical centres to another consortium of citizen advocates which are aggregated in the Public Interest Satellite Association. Here is an ingenious plan to marry the corporate need to market a new and expensive product with a public need to derive some practical benefit from the very large investment in space. The decision to permit such an entry into the field will no doubt meet resistance from the domestic satellite companies (DomSats)
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which must amortise their capital investment and launch costs over the long term in their rate base. Although the effort seems a wise economy for public institutions, it may have substantial impact upon rates of users with no access to the non-profit system and/or the purchasing power of public institutions. Communications services for public institutions often constitute a substantial portion of the market, like the federal government telephone service provided by A T & T which might otherwise be aggregated with other public users. Such aggregation, unless confined to very small operations, may have a considerable effect on the free market for communications services. Thus the manner in which the web of mutual support between public and private institutions is woven in the USA is extremely complex. One supposition which must not be lost in the enthusiasm to provide wider access and lower cost is that the USA shuns socialisation of basic support systems. Majority opinion is that private entrepreneurial energy provides both incentives to economy and efficiencies of management which government entities and public institutions have difficulty attaining. Indeed, one of the promises which President Carter made to the American people was more rational and cost-effective budgeting and efficient management of their burgeoning public institutions. How resources and responsibilities are allocated between public and private institutions in the telecommunications industry is no less difficult a problem than any other area of public policy - it is just more suspect when allocated to government entities because control of the communications system represents power, and a deep-rooted fear of government control over ideas and opinions. The challenge is how to assure that power is shared while ideas and opinions are not suppressed.
Areas for government involvement There is broad agreement that government should not interfere with the content of messages. However, that leaves a wide array of other activities which are freely permitted: •
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12 Research results need not lead to any g o v e r n m e n t action, yet m a y provide a pool of useful i n f o r m a t i o n from w h i c h individual companies, as well as c o n s u m e r advocates, m a y make decisions or exert pressures to bring a b o u t nonm a n d a t o r y social change.
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•
Investment in research and development which facilitates innovative development of telecommunications capability, such as the NASA effort. Procurement policies which encourage telecommunications hardware manufacturing companies to develop innovative equipment. Economic analysis to provide information upon which state and federal regulatory agencies can make reasonable judgments about rates which will facilitate rather than impede the flow of information. Social impact research which will permit users to comprehend the manner in which the media, such as television, telephones, or Citizen's Band radios have useful or deleterious effects. ~2 Seed money or matching funds to states or regional consortia or affinity groups (national but specialised such as Cantonese speaking, or print handicapped) so that they may invest in communications hardware and/or develop software which is unavailable in the marketplace to serve the particular consortium or affinity group.
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• •
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13Examples: (a) live TV coverage of Congress or agency deliberations (how does this differ from the Congressional Record?) (b) audiovisual or computerised information systems with which to transfer information useful for public purposes, eg standard statistical data or consumer information on how to take advantage of government benefits like Medicare (how does this differ from Government Printing Office publications?); and (c) investment in artistic and cultural endeavours which cannot be underwritten solely by private sources but enhance the quality of life for all Americans or extend such opportunities to underserved citizens. 1~For example, common carriage for cable systems, editorial freedom for broadcast journalists, independence of producers from network censorship. ~ Thus the communications system is an infrastructure for the regional area which covers a metropolitan area, and including its entire service area (including its food supply and recreational service area), this is approximately 2-}-3 hours drive, so about 1 5 0 - 1 8 0 miles. An equitable distribution of telecommunications capability and services throughout this area would strengthen the sense of community, increase business opportunities, and improve the chances to exchange fuel consumption for communications transactions, which would have beneficial environmental advantages as well as improving the health of the marketplace of ideas upon which a democratic system relies.
Start-up loans, revolving funds, or subsidised interest rates to market-oriented private communications companies with new products to develop, either hardware or software, which will increase the diversity of the marketplace of ideas, without diminishing the existing flow of information. Direct investment in media messages which convey necessary information to the public. ~3 Technical standards which insure the integrity and capability of differing technologies and equipment so that they can all be integrated into a national system of communications. Investment in the training of or development of institutions for training technicians to keep the national communications system running smoothly and/or stimulate the development of skills which will improve the journalistic standards of the 'press' who serve as our gatekeepers. Promote standards of performance by those who control the transmission of media messages which encourage individual expression rather than institutional censorship. ~4 Encourage the development of legal rights and obligations which transfer liability and responsibility for placing deleterious messages such as libel and obscenity into the flow of information upon those who disseminate them rather than those who transmit them, and provide legal redress for individuals or class action suits for groups who suffer recognisable damage.
A pluralistic society can tolerate neither government censorship nor suppression by the private institutions which control the hardware of information dissemination. Thus, the aim must be to develop as free a marketplace of ideas as is possible within the economic, technical, and political realities obtaining in the USA. It is to be hoped that the USA will both tolerate and support an electronic highway over which messages may travel reasonably uninhibited by the whims of either government or private czars. The architectural design and capital investment in such electronic highways cannot be left simply to chance nor can it be determined on economic considerations alone - for the result would be a patchwork quilt ill designed to serve the multiplicity of needs of all the American people.
Preserving democracy What can be ascertained with some faith from the writings and experience of Carter are twofold: he has a penchant for planning, and he has lived in the rural South and understands the utility of such infrastructure investments as rural electrification and rural free delivery of mail. In a society driven by information exchange and substantially service-oriented rather than industrially oriented, the primary infrastructure investment is in communication rather than transportation. Easy access to information will be a prime motivating factor in the determination of where American people work and live in the next century. ~5 Thus US policy can ignore communications at its peril, domestically or internationally. Certainly, developing nations look upon communication as a major asset in attaining equality. For the USA to pursue its present inadequate non-policy will mean abdication o f leadership to the Japanese or the Germans.
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For easy access to microwave networks and satellite transmitters may be as important to business success as easy access to super highways and jet airports. Moreover, the extent to which public institutions may share in the wealth of new uses of communications systems will depend upon the ability to plan for shared use in the design of the systems as they take place. How and where the microwave, cables, satellites, and optical fibres are installed and by whom they are controlled will determine how open a system of communication can be sustained for the foreseeable future. The postal system, conceived as a major investment to bring the colonies together, with a national rate available to all, was no doubt a brilliant move. What kind or kinds of electronic highways will replace the old post roads may very well determine the nation's future. Therefore, their design and development surely are deserving of as much time and attention as our economic or environmental health. Thus a centralised agency modelled on the Council of Economic Advisers or the Council on Environmental Quality, to evaluate the communications system and promote the cooperative efforts of public and private institutions is of high priority for the new administration especially if Carter is serious about his commitment to bring government to the people and the people into the government. There is a substantial need for bundling the communications policy function into a single agency where long-term problems involving these disparate and varied interests may at least be debated in the same forum, even if their resolution must be left to diverse and independent forces operating voluntarily but cooperatively. Only a strong guiding purpose and commitment to a free flow of information can assure an optimum environment for democratic institutions to flourish.
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T E L E C O M M U N I C A T I O N S POLICY June 1977
Anne W. Branscomb
The U S A d o e s n o t h a v e a coherent framework for communications policy. The a u t h o r sets o u t w h a t s h o u l d b e t h e prime concerns of a c o m m u n i c a t i o n s policy aimed a t s e r v i n g a p l u r a l i s t i c s o c i e t y in an 'electronic age'. She describes the current situation, in which
responsibilities for communications are divided over a wide range of government organisations. The C o m m u n i c a t i o n s A c t of 1 9 3 4 is under review, a n d t h e a u t h o r f o c u s e s o n major aspects of t h e debate, a n d lists s u i t a b l e areas for government involvement. She c o n c l u d e s by s t r e s s i n g t h e need for the new US a d m i n i s t r a t i o n t o provide a c o h e r e n t s t r u c t u r e for communications policy making to
Communications capability represents power in any society. For an authoritarian system it is the means by which control is retained. In a democratic system it is the essence of shared responsibility. Therefore, the health and maintenance of the communications system is crucial to the survival of democracy - a fragile form of government at best in a world dominated by authoritarian regimes. Yet Americans, who live in the healthiest and most powerful democracy economically, suffer from a remarkable myopia when it comes to looking at the systemic problems of their communications system. Indeed, the U S A seems unable to cope with any rational and/or centralised look at communications policy! There are three reasons for this resistance to the policy-making function: •
encourage the essential free flow of information.
A n n e W. B r a n s c o m b is w i t h Kalba B o w e n Associates, 5 Hidden Oak Lane, A r m o n k , NY 1 0 5 0 4 , USA.
•
• ~Tom Whitehead was Director of the Office of Telecommunications Policy, Executive Office of the President, in the Nixon administration.
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The First Amendment, which was written at a time when authoritarian governments were censoring speech rather effectively, and, therefore, a major concern was to prevent the government from restraining the free flow of information initiated by individuals or the gatekeepers chosen to select information for distribution, the journalists and editors. Consequently, very little has developed in a structural way, except in broadcasting (where the rules of the game were modified for adaptation to the scarcity of spectrum space), to cope with the roadblocks executed by conglomerated economic power which aggregates and controls a few entities for distribution of information. There are many people, economists and scholars as well as ordinary people and their political leaders, who genuinely believe that (a) the government which governs least is best, (b) the economy which is least regulated is healthiest, and (c) the marketplace of ideas which is least manipulated permits the freest flow of information. The most recent history of entry of centralised government into systemic analysis of communications policy has resulted in pressures which were perceived to be politically rather than philosophically motivated, such as Tom Whitehead's pursuit of localism in the US Public Broadcasting System I and Spiro Agnew's attack on the network news. Thus, the actors were T E L E C O M M U N I C A T I O N S POLICY June 1977
Bundlhlg communications polio,for the new US administration
themselves unable to persuade their audiences that they were trying to perfect a communications system in which all participants would have equitable access in putting their messages into the public stream of consciousness. Consequently, the nation arrives in the last quarter of the 20th century blessed with so much hardware, portending such proliferation of message-generating machinery that the wildest Walter Mitty dreams could be satisfied, but without the framework of communications policy in which to spin the various webs of software. Remarkably, the USA approaches the 21st century with communications toys to dazzle the most imaginative minds, and give sight and sound to their most creative ideas, but with an inherited political garment designed to prevent 17th century British kings from silencing their subjects! The irony is that the nation is beset with economic policy, foreign policy, agricultural policy, ad infinitum, but is without a coherent communications policy. Yet communications policy is the thread by which all other policies are not only interwoven but released to the public for ferment, discussion, and decision. How can a communications policy be put together for a democratic society?
Principles The first task is to deal with the realities of what a rational policy would be had the First Fathers been writing the Bill of Rights in 1977 rather than 1787. For a Bill of Communications Rights which might serve a pluralistic society of 220 million people in an electronic age of technical diversity, the following should be prime concerns: equitable access to the system; non-discriminatory rate structure; privacy for private messages; accuracy for public messages; the right to correct inaccurate messages circulated by third parties; geographically dispersed points of entry; shared use to husband resources and reduce costs; freedom of choice for the receipt of information; freedom of choice of mode of transmission; and the right to prohibit third parties from distributing proprietary information without permission and/or compensation of the source. Note that none of these is intended to control the content of messages prior to distribution except where proprietary rights or privacy are involved. Moreover, they are intended to encourage the free flow from and to widely dispersed locations with a nondiscriminatory rate structure. To encourage national access, this would mean distance-insensitive pricing, although types of messages would necessarily have different rate structures depending upon such diverse uses as delivery of television signals as compared with handwritten letters or store and forward computer-processed digital signals.
Current situation 2 For a detailed breakdown of telecommunications policy responsibilities in the USA, see Paul Polishuk, 'Telecommunications policy making and institutions of the US government', Telecommunications Policy, Vol 1, No 1, 1976, pp 52-67.
Second, what institutions exist 2 and how can the planning process be centralised for optimum freedom of communications flow? At present, communications policy in the US government is extremely fragmented.
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3Coordination of international policy is particularly troublesome as the suppliers of communications hardware and software lie almost entirely within the private sector. Representation in negotiations, ie international tariff rates, facilities planning, transfer of technology as well as direct broadcast satellites, has been difficult. It took six months to put together representatives of the Defense and State Department, United States Information Agency (USIA), the OTP and the FCC to look at the political overtones.of international spectrum allocation. Private industry took the initiative in pressing DOS to create an ad hoc I nteragency Task Force on transborder data flow restrictions. Divided interests in this area required representatives of eight agencies: DOS, FCC, OTP, NSF, OT, as well as the National Bureau of Standards, The Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Office of Management and Budget.
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The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent regulatory commission, which licenses radio and television delivery, regulates record and voice common carriers, and polices the entry of new technologies into the marketplace (such as satellites, cable television, and communications processing). The Office of Telecommunications Policy (OTP) in the Executive Office of the President evolved from the need to remove the management of spectrum allocated for government use (more than 50% of capacity) from the control of the military establishment. The Office of Telecommunications (OT) in the Department of Commerce, in addition to operating a laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, conducts research in new technologies of communications and operates as the research arm of the OTP for economic, technical, and policy analysis. The National Institute of Education, spawned by the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, has funded educational research and interactive instructional demonstrations. The Emergency School Aid Act administered by the Office of Education of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW), funds television programmes using racial minorities for design and production. The Government Services Administration procurement policies guide the purchase of millions of dollars worth of telecommunications and computing equipment. A coherent policy could stimulate innovative development while providing a substantial market for the purchase of telecommunication equipment from private industry. The National Science Foundation (NSF) funds the RANN (Research Applied to National Needs) Program which has produced vast quantities of statistical and analytical data to provide insight into the operation of the national communication system as well as its impact on social values. The Department of Housing and Urban Development has taken little or no interest in telecommunications planning for community development. Yet, as owner by default of some of the major housing developments with some of the few interactive cable television systems, it has an opportunity to use these facilities for experimental development. Moreover, it is funding some television programmes to inspire confidence in the inner cities. The State Department has little positive capability or interest in telecommunications policy as such, but has very real negative influence, as recently exhibited through the demise of the OTP plan for a Pacific Basin Conference. Furthermore, as the department responsible for international negotiation, it takes a leading role in organising the US representation at the World Administrative Radio Conference where radio spectrum space is allocated among the nations. 3 The Defense Communications Agency (DCA) manages all the communication facilities of the three military services which represent the largest single investment in communications equipment and services in the country, thus stimulating production and setting requirements for performance in the communications industry. The Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) of the Congress, a recent entry into the communications policy confusion sweepstakes, has concentrated primarily on rural communications. At the prodding of Senators Talmadge and Magnuson, the OTA recently funded a
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4 The study and conference are reviewed in Telecommunications Policy, Vol 1, No 2, pp 164-169. s Meanwhile John F. McLaughlin, Director of Strategic Planning for the USPS, in a presentation to the Harvard Program on Information Policy on 18 October 1976, observed that now may be an optimum time in the history of the postal service, because so many of its delivery staff are approaching retirement. This may be one way to cut costs, but it may not be the best way to deliver social security cheques to grandmothers in rural areas, nor may it be a satisfactory resolution of the job loss for the children of 'postpeople' who are reaching the breadwinning a g e as fast as their parents retire.
study and a conference on rural communication jointly with OTP to discuss demonstration projects to explore development and use of cable television systems in rural areas. 4 More recently, the Congress has voted to fund an effort on the implications of the information society, in which the participants will be from the OTA and this is currently in the process of organisation. The National Technical Information Service (NTIS) of the US Department of Commerce provides on-line information services of a variety of kinds and is actively lobbying to change the exclusion from copyright protection for such services funded by the federal government. Such policy is contrary to long-standing freedom of information funded by federal sources, but is consistent with the pressure to recapture public investment through user fees (as applied to recreational areas, for example) and as permitted by an exception to copyright law for the Standard Reference Data Program operated by the National Bureau of Standards. Such internal policies within the federal agencies are under review by an interagency committee under the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Science and Technology. There is another independent Commission o n Libraries and Information Science (CLIS) to study the changing role of libraries with new technologies of communication, storage and retrieval of information. This is housed within the HEW complex, and has substantial overlapping interests with the Commission on New Technological Uses of Copyright (CONTU), which has the specific mandate to advise Congress solely on revisions of the copyright law, whereas CLIS is charged with responsibility for the health of the public library system. There is room, however, for a substantial fight brewing between the interests of the information industries which are proprietary and the interests of the librarians in free distribution of a public good. There is a Privacy Commission which is undertaking to establish standards for the protection of individuals about whom information is ascertained, processed, and stored in large data banks within the government; but this is only a first step in trying to cope with vast data banking of information and sale thereof by the private sector. The Postal Service, which does meet two of my proposed criteria for measuring national performance - equitable entry and distanceinsensitive pricing - is in a state of disarray and dissolution. Noting substantial loss of the economic base to faster delivery services and electronic funds transfer (over 50% of first class service is transfer of financial information), the Congress has merely set up another commission to study and report on USPS problems. 5 Another commission, the Electronic Fund Transfer Commission, is looking at banks, credit unions, and retail merchandisers who, with the national credit card companies (Amexco, Bankamericard, Carte Blanche, Diners, Master Charge) are jockeying for their share of the retail credit (a multibillion dollar business) oblivious to the problem they are creating for the postal union whose jobs and services are in jeopardy and/or rural mail recipients whose service is not costeffective. At the same time the courts are having to cope with such definitions as CBCT (Consumer Bank Computer Terminals) and interpretation of banking laws which may inhibit or impede the electronic flow of information about credit and financial transactions for the foreseeable future without adequate technical expertise to
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5in early February 1977, the FCC approved an application by the Public Broadcasting Service to construct and operate a main origination earth station in Fairfax, Virginia, near Washington, DC and earth receive only saucers for 13 noncommercial public television stations around the country to operate a satellite interconnection service using three transponders leased from Western Union. This is the lead application for a system which will ultimately interconnect the 2 6 8 public television stations and 2 0 2 public radio stations with a proposed five regional transmit stations in addition to the master transmitter in Washington (Broadcasting, 14 February 1977, pp 99100). 7 Furthermore, the satellite interconnect might just as easily deliver grandmother's social security cheque - especially in the middle of the night when public broadcasting viewers are asleep anyway. a This was reaffirmed in the Rostow Report, released after some prodding at the end of the Johnson administration. (Final Report of the President's Task Force on National Communications Policy, 7 December 1968). 9 The proposed "Consumer Communications Reform Act" is discussed in Richard E. Wiley, 'The US communications consumer and monopoly supply - the FCC position on the Consumer Communications Reform Act', John D. deButts, 'The US communications consumer and FCC policies - the AT&T position on the Consumer Communications Reform Act', and Leland L. Johnson, 'A review of the FCC and AT&T positions', Telecommunications Policy, Vol 1, No 2, 1977, pp 99-124.
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understand the hardware and certainly without adequate comprehension of the policy implications. The Social Security Administration is merrily transferring social security cheques to banks by electronic delivery made without the slightest concern about the impact on the postal services. The Internal Revenue Service applies different methods of capitalisation and depreciation for telecommunications equipment which may discourage innovation in the rate-regulated utilities while tax reformers, eager to close loopholes, may inhibit the formation of capital in the unregulated telecommunication companies as well. Meanwhile, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and its ungrateful stepchild the Public Broadcasting Service are engaged in a debilitating internecine fight while putting into place a satellite system of interconnection to deliver 'Athens to the Pedernales'. 6 However, no one has considered where or how all the Olympian quality software is to be produced to programme more channels to its affiliates, or how the affiliates are to overcome the technical limitations and poor quality of one very weak U H F signal, v At the same time Bell, and the 1600 unaffiliated independent telephone companies (which can hardly be looked upon as a completely private industry, being a regulated monopoly providing a very necessary and public service) have mounted a substantial, and to some convincing, argument that any other entry into the telecommunications system would be deleterious to the national integrated telecommunication system which was the stated goal of the Communications Act of 1934. 8
Rewriting the Communications Act Since then there has been both a communications revolution and a policy void - except for isolated abortive and deleterious sorties into programming control by the OTP and the CPB - along with much ad hoc decision making concerning competition at certain points in the common carrier area by the FCC. Thus the nation finds itself the middle of the most fantastic proliferation of new electronic communications services ever witnessed and with hardly a soul in the Carter team in place to cope with the magnitude of the problem. Fortunately, all is not lost, for the new Chairman of the Subcommittee on Communications, Lionel VanDeerlin, has announced (with the help of a small, young, but talented and enthusiastic staff) that the Committee is going to rewrite the Communications Act of 1934. 9 The reverberations from the Senate suggest that this effort may be overambitious and premature, but it must be d o n e - and the sooner the dialogue is started the better.
Defining roles But what will the new Act accomplish? Fortunately, many of the actors are beginning to see the historical drama about to unfold and are putting their acts together. Certainly the Bell system, at the peak of euphoria and public appreciation in its centennial year, has dropped its bill into the hopper - which argues that the telephone is at the centre of the electronic communications universe and all good things necessarily follow from that proposition. On the other hand, it can equally be argued that the telephone is one of many services
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10 Indeed, the Bell Company has lost this argument several times in the past both in a judicially mediated and market-oriented context (eg the 1956 consent decrees, and the failure of the public to appreciate the utility of a common carrier broadcast service). 11The Domestic Council Committee on the Right of Privacy, under the Chairmanship of Vice President Rockefeller, issued a report during the summer of 1976, which is the most comprehensive recent review of the converging concerns at the interface between information policy and tetecommurfications issues. The report makes a strong case for a more unified approach to such issues and strong leadership within the White House complex. The OT has also called for the formulation of a national telecommunications agenda which would address the technical economic and spectrum management problems. This more modest proposal is a step in the right direction, since many of the participants as well as the outside experts are becoming more and more apprehensive about having understood the problems emerging from the communications revolution well enough to produce any comprehensive solutions.
which can be served by the electronic highway: just because the telephone was one of t h e first, and better than its closest competitor, Western Union, in putting into place an integrated company which provided its own interconnections and equipment may not be sufficient reason to give it a monopoly on all potential services which might be transmitted over the national interconnected system. ~° The anti-Bell forces have organised themselves into a lobbying group entitled the Ad Hoc Committee for Competitive Telecommunications (ACCT) which will put forward the argument for a truly competitive communications system in the private line services and peripheral customer premise equipment. The Information Industries Association and the libraries and the publishers are busily trying to educate themselves about the impact of on-line computerised information systems and electronic text in order to determine whether the report of the Commission on New Technological Uses of Copyright (CONTU) will be protective of existing technologies or promotive of the new and resolve whether they can and should be both. The Carnegie Foundation, at the request of various sections of the public, is beginning to consider the possibility of a new commission to address the further development of the public broadcasting system and related technologies such as cable or satellite carriers. The Aspen Institute Program on Communication has initiated a year-long study of the telecommunications policy planning apparatus of the federal government, looking towards some reorganisation recommendations which will streamline and coordinate government decision making in this field. ~ NASA, which has spent over $60 billion in public investment has in the process provided a substantial amount of public education about space. However, the educational process has been funnelled through network news programmes and special coverage by and large, rather than through the public broadcasting system. And much of the cost of transmission has been underwritten by corporate advertising, although the major investment has been public funds in the space programme which provided the footage shown by the networks. Now that space development has been demoted to a lower priority on the public agenda, NASA is looking for ways to use its vast equipment for public use. One way has been to fund research in the ATS-6 satellite over the Rocky Mountain Region, and over the Indian Ocean. Some of this has been funded cooperatively with the OTP of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. More recently, there is in the works a marriage of corporate, government and public service users in which Hughes Aircraft proposes to launch a satellite • from the space shuttle, launch costs of which will be donated by NASA. The satellite is to be given to the Public Service Satellite Consortium for a matching contribution of about 20% from its aggregated public service users which range from local school boards to hospital and medical centres to another consortium of citizen advocates which are aggregated in the Public Interest Satellite Association. Here is an ingenious plan to marry the corporate need to market a new and expensive product with a public need to derive some practical benefit from the very large investment in space. The decision to permit such an entry into the field will no doubt meet resistance from the domestic satellite companies (DomSats)
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which must amortise their capital investment and launch costs over the long term in their rate base. Although the effort seems a wise economy for public institutions, it may have substantial impact upon rates of users with no access to the non-profit system and/or the purchasing power of public institutions. Communications services for public institutions often constitute a substantial portion of the market, like the federal government telephone service provided by A T & T which might otherwise be aggregated with other public users. Such aggregation, unless confined to very small operations, may have a considerable effect on the free market for communications services. Thus the manner in which the web of mutual support between public and private institutions is woven in the USA is extremely complex. One supposition which must not be lost in the enthusiasm to provide wider access and lower cost is that the USA shuns socialisation of basic support systems. Majority opinion is that private entrepreneurial energy provides both incentives to economy and efficiencies of management which government entities and public institutions have difficulty attaining. Indeed, one of the promises which President Carter made to the American people was more rational and cost-effective budgeting and efficient management of their burgeoning public institutions. How resources and responsibilities are allocated between public and private institutions in the telecommunications industry is no less difficult a problem than any other area of public policy - it is just more suspect when allocated to government entities because control of the communications system represents power, and a deep-rooted fear of government control over ideas and opinions. The challenge is how to assure that power is shared while ideas and opinions are not suppressed.
Areas for government involvement There is broad agreement that government should not interfere with the content of messages. However, that leaves a wide array of other activities which are freely permitted: •
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12 Research results need not lead to any g o v e r n m e n t action, yet m a y provide a pool of useful i n f o r m a t i o n from w h i c h individual companies, as well as c o n s u m e r advocates, m a y make decisions or exert pressures to bring a b o u t nonm a n d a t o r y social change.
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Investment in research and development which facilitates innovative development of telecommunications capability, such as the NASA effort. Procurement policies which encourage telecommunications hardware manufacturing companies to develop innovative equipment. Economic analysis to provide information upon which state and federal regulatory agencies can make reasonable judgments about rates which will facilitate rather than impede the flow of information. Social impact research which will permit users to comprehend the manner in which the media, such as television, telephones, or Citizen's Band radios have useful or deleterious effects. ~2 Seed money or matching funds to states or regional consortia or affinity groups (national but specialised such as Cantonese speaking, or print handicapped) so that they may invest in communications hardware and/or develop software which is unavailable in the marketplace to serve the particular consortium or affinity group.
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13Examples: (a) live TV coverage of Congress or agency deliberations (how does this differ from the Congressional Record?) (b) audiovisual or computerised information systems with which to transfer information useful for public purposes, eg standard statistical data or consumer information on how to take advantage of government benefits like Medicare (how does this differ from Government Printing Office publications?); and (c) investment in artistic and cultural endeavours which cannot be underwritten solely by private sources but enhance the quality of life for all Americans or extend such opportunities to underserved citizens. 1~For example, common carriage for cable systems, editorial freedom for broadcast journalists, independence of producers from network censorship. ~ Thus the communications system is an infrastructure for the regional area which covers a metropolitan area, and including its entire service area (including its food supply and recreational service area), this is approximately 2-}-3 hours drive, so about 1 5 0 - 1 8 0 miles. An equitable distribution of telecommunications capability and services throughout this area would strengthen the sense of community, increase business opportunities, and improve the chances to exchange fuel consumption for communications transactions, which would have beneficial environmental advantages as well as improving the health of the marketplace of ideas upon which a democratic system relies.
Start-up loans, revolving funds, or subsidised interest rates to market-oriented private communications companies with new products to develop, either hardware or software, which will increase the diversity of the marketplace of ideas, without diminishing the existing flow of information. Direct investment in media messages which convey necessary information to the public. ~3 Technical standards which insure the integrity and capability of differing technologies and equipment so that they can all be integrated into a national system of communications. Investment in the training of or development of institutions for training technicians to keep the national communications system running smoothly and/or stimulate the development of skills which will improve the journalistic standards of the 'press' who serve as our gatekeepers. Promote standards of performance by those who control the transmission of media messages which encourage individual expression rather than institutional censorship. ~4 Encourage the development of legal rights and obligations which transfer liability and responsibility for placing deleterious messages such as libel and obscenity into the flow of information upon those who disseminate them rather than those who transmit them, and provide legal redress for individuals or class action suits for groups who suffer recognisable damage.
A pluralistic society can tolerate neither government censorship nor suppression by the private institutions which control the hardware of information dissemination. Thus, the aim must be to develop as free a marketplace of ideas as is possible within the economic, technical, and political realities obtaining in the USA. It is to be hoped that the USA will both tolerate and support an electronic highway over which messages may travel reasonably uninhibited by the whims of either government or private czars. The architectural design and capital investment in such electronic highways cannot be left simply to chance nor can it be determined on economic considerations alone - for the result would be a patchwork quilt ill designed to serve the multiplicity of needs of all the American people.
Preserving democracy What can be ascertained with some faith from the writings and experience of Carter are twofold: he has a penchant for planning, and he has lived in the rural South and understands the utility of such infrastructure investments as rural electrification and rural free delivery of mail. In a society driven by information exchange and substantially service-oriented rather than industrially oriented, the primary infrastructure investment is in communication rather than transportation. Easy access to information will be a prime motivating factor in the determination of where American people work and live in the next century. ~5 Thus US policy can ignore communications at its peril, domestically or internationally. Certainly, developing nations look upon communication as a major asset in attaining equality. For the USA to pursue its present inadequate non-policy will mean abdication o f leadership to the Japanese or the Germans.
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For easy access to microwave networks and satellite transmitters may be as important to business success as easy access to super highways and jet airports. Moreover, the extent to which public institutions may share in the wealth of new uses of communications systems will depend upon the ability to plan for shared use in the design of the systems as they take place. How and where the microwave, cables, satellites, and optical fibres are installed and by whom they are controlled will determine how open a system of communication can be sustained for the foreseeable future. The postal system, conceived as a major investment to bring the colonies together, with a national rate available to all, was no doubt a brilliant move. What kind or kinds of electronic highways will replace the old post roads may very well determine the nation's future. Therefore, their design and development surely are deserving of as much time and attention as our economic or environmental health. Thus a centralised agency modelled on the Council of Economic Advisers or the Council on Environmental Quality, to evaluate the communications system and promote the cooperative efforts of public and private institutions is of high priority for the new administration especially if Carter is serious about his commitment to bring government to the people and the people into the government. There is a substantial need for bundling the communications policy function into a single agency where long-term problems involving these disparate and varied interests may at least be debated in the same forum, even if their resolution must be left to diverse and independent forces operating voluntarily but cooperatively. Only a strong guiding purpose and commitment to a free flow of information can assure an optimum environment for democratic institutions to flourish.
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