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The NTIA TELECOM 2000 report: Charting the course for a new century
TELEMATICS and
INFORMATICS
Vol 6, N o 1, pp 3-8, 1989 1989 Pergamon Press plc Printed in the USA 0736-5853/89 $300 + 00
THE NTIA TELECOM 2000 REPORT: CHARTING THE COURSE FOR A NEW CENTURY Alfred C Sikes Abstract-The basic message of the NTIA TELECOM 2000 report can be
described in two words: convergence and transformation. The report emphasizes developing the infrastructure to enhance competitiveness and reduce turf battles among agencies. Since 1912, the Federal Government has undertaken a comprehensive review of its communications policies just about every 20 years. In October 1988, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), which is directed by Executive Order to analyze U.S. communications policies from a long-term, comprehensive standpoint, issued the latest of these long-range policy reports. SCOPEANDPURPOSE
N T I A T E L E C O M 2000: Charting the Course f o r a New Century looks at the United States' future telecommunications policies and measures that vision of the future against our current communications policies. A basic objective of this effort is to build greater understanding of the importance of sound communications policies, and, at the same time, to prompt debate on what our national goals in this critical sector should be. We concluded that current policies are not going to get us where we think the country should be, and we recommend a number of "course corrections." Also, where we saw new opportunities, we put forward proposals to capitalize on them.
Size of the report N T I A T E L E C O M 2000 is 672 pages long, or a little less than seven times longer than the U.S. Code version of the Communications Act of 1934. And, there are two parts. The first third of the volume is the general policy material. It contains three broad overview sections, plus seven chapters, each dealing with a specific a r e a - s u c h as broadcasting, or delivering critical public services, or universal service, or improving our international trade situation. The remaining two-thirds of the report consist of some 17 separate staff papers on individual communications m a r k e t s - s u c h as satellites, consumer electronics, program production, and so forth. These staff papers contain current sales data, a discussion of the m a j o r pending issues, and some projections regarding individual sector technological and commercial developments.
Alfred C. Sikes is Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information and Administrator, National Telecommunications and Information Administration, Washington, D.C. 20230.
4
Alfred C. Sikes
TWO BASIC MESSAGES As government publications go, NTIA TELECOM2000 actually makes for fairly easy and interesting reading. The basic message o f this report can be described in two words: convergence and transformation.
Convergence By "convergence," I mean basically two things. First, the traditional lines of demarcation which used to characterize the communications business are obviously blurring. Technology is seeing to that. For example, conventional regulatory distinctions between common carrier communications and mass media services, which are often hard enough to draw today, will get much harder to establish, and enforce, in the future. Second, however, there is also a convergence involving what we have traditionally thought of as communications activities, and many other economic or societal endeavors. As an economist would say, communications and information services are becoming a critical production factor for more and more industries. In financial services, for instance, some 75% of the equipment investment today is in communications and information apparatus. Citicorp, or Merrill Lynch, or even the First National Bank o f Pleasant Hope, Missouri, for example, probably could not do business today without communications and information services.
Synergy When Marshall McLuhan wrote about television years ago, he tried to differentiate between the medium and the message. The synergistic relationship which already exists between traditional telecommunications activities and other endeavors is going to get stronger and closer. As communications become more and more integral to a broader range of commercial enterprises, it is going to become harder and harder to distinguish between what constitutes "communications" and what is considered "financial services," or retailing, or even much of manufacturing.
Transformation The convergence process, if we handle it correctly, has great transforming potential. With communications, we have the ability to satisfy many of tomorrow's education, health-care delivery, and government services priorities. We have the ability to empower the individual. We can provide rural residents, for instance, with unprecedented access to the full range of news, information, and entertainment options. We can provide the average residential customer nationwide with options that were once available only in a handful of urban areas, or available only to a privileged few.
DEMOCRATIZATION OF BENEFITS We are strongly encouraged by both these developments. One very positive trend in communications over the past 20 years has been what some people label the "democratization" o f benefits. Two decades ago, only the largest corporate customers typically had a full range of communications equipment choices, for example, or access to bulkdiscount pricing arrangements that helped keep their calling costs low.
NTIA TELECOM 2000
5
Competition, however, has afforded the average residential customer or small business user today essentially the same range of equipment and service choices which only major users once enjoyed. Options and alternatives, in short, have been spread more widely. More of the same This democratization of benefits has not yet occurred in all respects. For example, only a relatively few residential customers and large commercial users today have full access to all the efficiency and service gains that are inherent in the latest electronic information offerings. Tomorrow, we have the potential to further "democratize" these "leverage technologies." We know how much major commercial users have benefited from these electronic tools. So we think that there is an opportunity here for us to have a similar, positive effect on the average customer's life as well. There is no reason why the benefits of high-speed digital lines connecting computers and individuals cannot be tomorrow's reality. And, there is every reason to believe that if this happens, there will be major economic and social benefits.
IMPORTANCE OF NEW OBJECTIVES In the future, the policies which the government pursues will have implications that go well beyond just the telecommunications sector. One of the reasons for issuing TELEC O M 2000 was to spur a discussion about what our new national communications goals now should be. We have achieved universal basic telephone service, and yet this continues to be the centerpiece of communications policy in the United States. So T E L E C O M 2000 speaks to the desirability of broadening our policy objectives to include not only universal basic service, but universal access to new communications and information offerings as well. Our report stresses the importance of our continuing to place primary weight on competition. And, in this regard, we also conclude that there is no good reason to assume that more competition and less regulation are necessarily incompatible with either continued universal service or achieving universal access to new information services. Increasing use and benefits Competitive communications and information markets have delivered substantial public benefits to date. They are the best guarantee that the public will have the communications and information facilities and services they want and need. Our report notes that if we can develop a sound communications infrastructure, and establish market conditions which are conducive to that infrastructure being used efficiently, then the traditional communications cost equation should change as well. One reason why basic local telephone service has required subsidies is that much of the local capital plant and its associated human resources are just not used to their maximum potential. They are not used to their maximum potential because of regulatory restrictions, as well as certain incentives which are built into the prevailing rate-ofreturn regulatory regime. Today, a relatively small level of use is required to carry a large telephone system
6
Alfred C. Sikes
investment. If we could increase that usage, however, customers would not only benefit, but service costs could be lower. Increasing use will entail removing unnecessary regulations. It will also involve encouraging the industry actively to develop new service offerings. Both of these are likely to result from policies which favor greater reliance on competition.
Increasing national competitiveness In addition to stressing the need for domestic policy reforms, N T I A T E L E C O M 2000 also emphasizes the importance for our country of developing the kind o f infrastructure for the "Information Age ~' that we need to stay competitive as a nation. As communications and information resources become more integral to a wider variety of businesses, the quality and abundance of those resources will be more and more key to our maintaining our relative competitiveness. At the same time, U.S. communications companies ought to redouble their efforts to compete in international communications equipment and services markets. The government is trying to do its job through efforts to reduce overseas barriers to trade. It is up to the industry now to follow through and to seek to capitalize on international trade opportunities in this fast-growing sector.
Need for new, flexible policies Historically, regulation has been premised on the assumption that unregulated markets cannot be counted upon to protect the public, or promote various public benefits. We are all familiar with economic regulation which has sought to minimize anticompetitive conduct by monopolies, for example. And, such regulation has been necessary when companies had sufficient power to sustain and take advantage of monopoly-like circumstances. Today, however, most communications markets are becoming increasingly competitive, and we are in a period of regulatory transition. As with most transitions, this one is a difficult period. Technical and economic circumstances are also changing so rapidly and in such profound ways that it is sometimes hard for both regulators and the industry to keep up with or fully understand the implications of these changes. We should remember that we are on the leading edge of massive transfers of technical and economic power. We are familiar with the effects automobiles, trucks, and airplanes had on the railroad business. As "power shifts" were taking place in that field, railroad companies were denied the opportunity to become transportation companies with obvious results. In communications, the same massive s h i f t s - s o m e obvious, others predictable, and some u n f o r e s e e n - a r e going on today. As we look into the future, the one word that best summarizes these massive shifts of power, again, is "convergence." We once received TV exclusively off-air, for instance, but today over half the nation's viewers receive it via coaxial cable. Business and public communications once used the "public network" almost exclusively, but now increasing amounts of information move instead through private networks, or networks that use a mix of public and private facilities. Growth and technology trends suggest an acceleration o f this phenomenon in the future. Where these shifts can take place more readily, growth in services, companies, uses, and revenue are more rapid. The data in our N T I A T E L E C O M 2000 report show that the less regulated a given
NTIA TELECOM 2000
7
telecommunications sector is, the faster it grows. Yet, many companies which foresee these technical and economic changes are often unable to get ahead of what is often called the "power curve." Some vested interests are also fighting hard and skillfully to slow or prevent regulatory change, and they have powerful tools. We should not be content with policies that slow the introduction of promising new services nor should we be content with policies that retard their distribution. In N T I A TELECOM 2000, we foresaw extraordinary promise, due to communications advances and potential, through the next decade and well into the early part of the next century. We foresaw rural students, for example, engaged in remote interactive instruction in the more complicated math and sciences. We foresaw lives being saved as personal transmitter units alert medical people at the inception of a heart attack. We foresaw small businesses being able to internationalize as international competition expanded communications services and drove prices closer to costs. But, we also noted that today we seem to concentrate unduly on the rules of competition, as if which company or group of companies ultimately delivers a particular service is crucial. Markets should be competitive, and competitors are important to the overall competitive process. But in the final analysis, the key public policy concern should be making sure that customers have access to potentially highly valued, new services. We have watched as a mass market for information services has developed in France, while similar services remain in the province of the relatively privileged few in the United States. We have also watched as customers in one part of the country get valued communications services like optional calling services and cable TV, years ahead of people in another part of the country who share the same communications appetite. As we think of these conflicts between policy and reality at a time when convergence promises such benefits, it is hard not to identify misdirected or paralyzed government as part of the problem. But, it would also not be possible to forecast a bright future for the year 2000 without a tempered, but at times aggressive, government. Because, absent a skilled cadre of communications officials pursuing agreed-upon national goals, we could soon see significant trouble. Symmetrical market access for international telecommunications companies is not absolutely essential. But the presence of scale and scope economies in many telecommunications markets makes it important that the opportunities shared by international companies not differ widely. As the recently enacted telecommunications trade bill notes, mutually advantageous market access is very important. Absent a strong U.S. Government effort aimed at fostering more free trade in telecommunications products and services, however, such a condition will just be too slow in coming. Historically, U.S. companies led the way in market applications for new technologies. But our leadership has declined recently. While there are signs that we are reasserting our leadership, today's international competition is tough indeed. It is made even tougher as certain countries target industrial sectors and support their development by combining the benefits of competition with the tangible government support. We have to do more to help U.S. companies compete more fully abroad. And, in this regard, N TI A TELECOM2000 advances the following two fundamental points. Emphasis on new services
First, it calls for a shift in overall regulatory policy. For the past decade, a fundamental focus of much federal regulation has been on preventing bad things from happening. Complicated separate subsidiary rules and restrictions on the kinds of services various
8
Alfred C. Sikes
companies can provide have been developed. Less attention has been paid to whether new services will be made available. The FCC's cellular mobile radio proceeding is a classic example. There, for more than 12 years, the FCC tried to come up with rules that people said were needed to keep the phone companies from monopolizing cellular radio. Meanwhile, however, we didn't have it. Madrid had it, Stockholm had it, Copenhagen had it. But Washington, D.C., for instance, didn't. N T I A played a m a j o r role in breaking the FCC's policy gridlock. We said, in effect, that we don't think anyone is going to be able to monopolize this new service. But even if they did, a monopolized cellular system is better than not having one at all. The FCC listened, they came up with an approach, and cellular radio took off. A m a j o r new business that has had a very positive impact on our country was made possible. And, of course, no one has managed to monopolize it. So we call, first, for policymakers to focus more on making good things happen. We do not suggest safeguards are not needed. They are. But we do say that in instances where a judgment call is needed, we ought to place more emphasis on making sure that new services are needed. Also, we talk about what may happen if those new offerings are not available, both from an economic and a public services standpoint.
Less faction A second m a j o r message in T E L E C O M 2000 is the need for all the players in telecommunications to spend less time jockeying for temporary advantage, and more time trying to work together to make possible the kind of new communications and information infrastructure that the country needs. One of the experts who helped us put this report together commented that "we're all in the same boat." The United States today faces strong economic challenges from abroad. If we do not get our act together better, we are going to have more trade and competitiveness difficulties than is true today. A way in which the government could reduce the level of divisiveness in telecommunications would be to encourage companies to compete more in the market than in front of federal agencies and courts. N T I A T E L E C O M 2000 thus reiterates earlier N T I A recommendations for regulatory reforms, as well as changes in the AT&T consent decree that would centralize responsibility in the expert regulatory agency, the FCC.
CONCLUSION The people who work in the telecommunications industry are fortunate. Their industry is strong and growing. They also have the opportunity to make a major, further contribution to the overall national welfare. Over the next few years, government communications policy makers will face a delicate balancing act. On the one hand, we have to develop means of allowing all of the companies in this key industry to make the m a x i m u m contribution. On the other hand, we have to do that in a way that ensures both the appearance and reality of fairness and, in that way, maintains the general consensus in favor of less regulatory, more competitive solutions. If both the industry and the government do things right, the United States will benefit greatly as a result.
INFORMATICS
Vol 6, N o 1, pp 3-8, 1989 1989 Pergamon Press plc Printed in the USA 0736-5853/89 $300 + 00
THE NTIA TELECOM 2000 REPORT: CHARTING THE COURSE FOR A NEW CENTURY Alfred C Sikes Abstract-The basic message of the NTIA TELECOM 2000 report can be
described in two words: convergence and transformation. The report emphasizes developing the infrastructure to enhance competitiveness and reduce turf battles among agencies. Since 1912, the Federal Government has undertaken a comprehensive review of its communications policies just about every 20 years. In October 1988, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), which is directed by Executive Order to analyze U.S. communications policies from a long-term, comprehensive standpoint, issued the latest of these long-range policy reports. SCOPEANDPURPOSE
N T I A T E L E C O M 2000: Charting the Course f o r a New Century looks at the United States' future telecommunications policies and measures that vision of the future against our current communications policies. A basic objective of this effort is to build greater understanding of the importance of sound communications policies, and, at the same time, to prompt debate on what our national goals in this critical sector should be. We concluded that current policies are not going to get us where we think the country should be, and we recommend a number of "course corrections." Also, where we saw new opportunities, we put forward proposals to capitalize on them.
Size of the report N T I A T E L E C O M 2000 is 672 pages long, or a little less than seven times longer than the U.S. Code version of the Communications Act of 1934. And, there are two parts. The first third of the volume is the general policy material. It contains three broad overview sections, plus seven chapters, each dealing with a specific a r e a - s u c h as broadcasting, or delivering critical public services, or universal service, or improving our international trade situation. The remaining two-thirds of the report consist of some 17 separate staff papers on individual communications m a r k e t s - s u c h as satellites, consumer electronics, program production, and so forth. These staff papers contain current sales data, a discussion of the m a j o r pending issues, and some projections regarding individual sector technological and commercial developments.
Alfred C. Sikes is Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information and Administrator, National Telecommunications and Information Administration, Washington, D.C. 20230.
4
Alfred C. Sikes
TWO BASIC MESSAGES As government publications go, NTIA TELECOM2000 actually makes for fairly easy and interesting reading. The basic message o f this report can be described in two words: convergence and transformation.
Convergence By "convergence," I mean basically two things. First, the traditional lines of demarcation which used to characterize the communications business are obviously blurring. Technology is seeing to that. For example, conventional regulatory distinctions between common carrier communications and mass media services, which are often hard enough to draw today, will get much harder to establish, and enforce, in the future. Second, however, there is also a convergence involving what we have traditionally thought of as communications activities, and many other economic or societal endeavors. As an economist would say, communications and information services are becoming a critical production factor for more and more industries. In financial services, for instance, some 75% of the equipment investment today is in communications and information apparatus. Citicorp, or Merrill Lynch, or even the First National Bank o f Pleasant Hope, Missouri, for example, probably could not do business today without communications and information services.
Synergy When Marshall McLuhan wrote about television years ago, he tried to differentiate between the medium and the message. The synergistic relationship which already exists between traditional telecommunications activities and other endeavors is going to get stronger and closer. As communications become more and more integral to a broader range of commercial enterprises, it is going to become harder and harder to distinguish between what constitutes "communications" and what is considered "financial services," or retailing, or even much of manufacturing.
Transformation The convergence process, if we handle it correctly, has great transforming potential. With communications, we have the ability to satisfy many of tomorrow's education, health-care delivery, and government services priorities. We have the ability to empower the individual. We can provide rural residents, for instance, with unprecedented access to the full range of news, information, and entertainment options. We can provide the average residential customer nationwide with options that were once available only in a handful of urban areas, or available only to a privileged few.
DEMOCRATIZATION OF BENEFITS We are strongly encouraged by both these developments. One very positive trend in communications over the past 20 years has been what some people label the "democratization" o f benefits. Two decades ago, only the largest corporate customers typically had a full range of communications equipment choices, for example, or access to bulkdiscount pricing arrangements that helped keep their calling costs low.
NTIA TELECOM 2000
5
Competition, however, has afforded the average residential customer or small business user today essentially the same range of equipment and service choices which only major users once enjoyed. Options and alternatives, in short, have been spread more widely. More of the same This democratization of benefits has not yet occurred in all respects. For example, only a relatively few residential customers and large commercial users today have full access to all the efficiency and service gains that are inherent in the latest electronic information offerings. Tomorrow, we have the potential to further "democratize" these "leverage technologies." We know how much major commercial users have benefited from these electronic tools. So we think that there is an opportunity here for us to have a similar, positive effect on the average customer's life as well. There is no reason why the benefits of high-speed digital lines connecting computers and individuals cannot be tomorrow's reality. And, there is every reason to believe that if this happens, there will be major economic and social benefits.
IMPORTANCE OF NEW OBJECTIVES In the future, the policies which the government pursues will have implications that go well beyond just the telecommunications sector. One of the reasons for issuing TELEC O M 2000 was to spur a discussion about what our new national communications goals now should be. We have achieved universal basic telephone service, and yet this continues to be the centerpiece of communications policy in the United States. So T E L E C O M 2000 speaks to the desirability of broadening our policy objectives to include not only universal basic service, but universal access to new communications and information offerings as well. Our report stresses the importance of our continuing to place primary weight on competition. And, in this regard, we also conclude that there is no good reason to assume that more competition and less regulation are necessarily incompatible with either continued universal service or achieving universal access to new information services. Increasing use and benefits Competitive communications and information markets have delivered substantial public benefits to date. They are the best guarantee that the public will have the communications and information facilities and services they want and need. Our report notes that if we can develop a sound communications infrastructure, and establish market conditions which are conducive to that infrastructure being used efficiently, then the traditional communications cost equation should change as well. One reason why basic local telephone service has required subsidies is that much of the local capital plant and its associated human resources are just not used to their maximum potential. They are not used to their maximum potential because of regulatory restrictions, as well as certain incentives which are built into the prevailing rate-ofreturn regulatory regime. Today, a relatively small level of use is required to carry a large telephone system
6
Alfred C. Sikes
investment. If we could increase that usage, however, customers would not only benefit, but service costs could be lower. Increasing use will entail removing unnecessary regulations. It will also involve encouraging the industry actively to develop new service offerings. Both of these are likely to result from policies which favor greater reliance on competition.
Increasing national competitiveness In addition to stressing the need for domestic policy reforms, N T I A T E L E C O M 2000 also emphasizes the importance for our country of developing the kind o f infrastructure for the "Information Age ~' that we need to stay competitive as a nation. As communications and information resources become more integral to a wider variety of businesses, the quality and abundance of those resources will be more and more key to our maintaining our relative competitiveness. At the same time, U.S. communications companies ought to redouble their efforts to compete in international communications equipment and services markets. The government is trying to do its job through efforts to reduce overseas barriers to trade. It is up to the industry now to follow through and to seek to capitalize on international trade opportunities in this fast-growing sector.
Need for new, flexible policies Historically, regulation has been premised on the assumption that unregulated markets cannot be counted upon to protect the public, or promote various public benefits. We are all familiar with economic regulation which has sought to minimize anticompetitive conduct by monopolies, for example. And, such regulation has been necessary when companies had sufficient power to sustain and take advantage of monopoly-like circumstances. Today, however, most communications markets are becoming increasingly competitive, and we are in a period of regulatory transition. As with most transitions, this one is a difficult period. Technical and economic circumstances are also changing so rapidly and in such profound ways that it is sometimes hard for both regulators and the industry to keep up with or fully understand the implications of these changes. We should remember that we are on the leading edge of massive transfers of technical and economic power. We are familiar with the effects automobiles, trucks, and airplanes had on the railroad business. As "power shifts" were taking place in that field, railroad companies were denied the opportunity to become transportation companies with obvious results. In communications, the same massive s h i f t s - s o m e obvious, others predictable, and some u n f o r e s e e n - a r e going on today. As we look into the future, the one word that best summarizes these massive shifts of power, again, is "convergence." We once received TV exclusively off-air, for instance, but today over half the nation's viewers receive it via coaxial cable. Business and public communications once used the "public network" almost exclusively, but now increasing amounts of information move instead through private networks, or networks that use a mix of public and private facilities. Growth and technology trends suggest an acceleration o f this phenomenon in the future. Where these shifts can take place more readily, growth in services, companies, uses, and revenue are more rapid. The data in our N T I A T E L E C O M 2000 report show that the less regulated a given
NTIA TELECOM 2000
7
telecommunications sector is, the faster it grows. Yet, many companies which foresee these technical and economic changes are often unable to get ahead of what is often called the "power curve." Some vested interests are also fighting hard and skillfully to slow or prevent regulatory change, and they have powerful tools. We should not be content with policies that slow the introduction of promising new services nor should we be content with policies that retard their distribution. In N T I A TELECOM 2000, we foresaw extraordinary promise, due to communications advances and potential, through the next decade and well into the early part of the next century. We foresaw rural students, for example, engaged in remote interactive instruction in the more complicated math and sciences. We foresaw lives being saved as personal transmitter units alert medical people at the inception of a heart attack. We foresaw small businesses being able to internationalize as international competition expanded communications services and drove prices closer to costs. But, we also noted that today we seem to concentrate unduly on the rules of competition, as if which company or group of companies ultimately delivers a particular service is crucial. Markets should be competitive, and competitors are important to the overall competitive process. But in the final analysis, the key public policy concern should be making sure that customers have access to potentially highly valued, new services. We have watched as a mass market for information services has developed in France, while similar services remain in the province of the relatively privileged few in the United States. We have also watched as customers in one part of the country get valued communications services like optional calling services and cable TV, years ahead of people in another part of the country who share the same communications appetite. As we think of these conflicts between policy and reality at a time when convergence promises such benefits, it is hard not to identify misdirected or paralyzed government as part of the problem. But, it would also not be possible to forecast a bright future for the year 2000 without a tempered, but at times aggressive, government. Because, absent a skilled cadre of communications officials pursuing agreed-upon national goals, we could soon see significant trouble. Symmetrical market access for international telecommunications companies is not absolutely essential. But the presence of scale and scope economies in many telecommunications markets makes it important that the opportunities shared by international companies not differ widely. As the recently enacted telecommunications trade bill notes, mutually advantageous market access is very important. Absent a strong U.S. Government effort aimed at fostering more free trade in telecommunications products and services, however, such a condition will just be too slow in coming. Historically, U.S. companies led the way in market applications for new technologies. But our leadership has declined recently. While there are signs that we are reasserting our leadership, today's international competition is tough indeed. It is made even tougher as certain countries target industrial sectors and support their development by combining the benefits of competition with the tangible government support. We have to do more to help U.S. companies compete more fully abroad. And, in this regard, N TI A TELECOM2000 advances the following two fundamental points. Emphasis on new services
First, it calls for a shift in overall regulatory policy. For the past decade, a fundamental focus of much federal regulation has been on preventing bad things from happening. Complicated separate subsidiary rules and restrictions on the kinds of services various
8
Alfred C. Sikes
companies can provide have been developed. Less attention has been paid to whether new services will be made available. The FCC's cellular mobile radio proceeding is a classic example. There, for more than 12 years, the FCC tried to come up with rules that people said were needed to keep the phone companies from monopolizing cellular radio. Meanwhile, however, we didn't have it. Madrid had it, Stockholm had it, Copenhagen had it. But Washington, D.C., for instance, didn't. N T I A played a m a j o r role in breaking the FCC's policy gridlock. We said, in effect, that we don't think anyone is going to be able to monopolize this new service. But even if they did, a monopolized cellular system is better than not having one at all. The FCC listened, they came up with an approach, and cellular radio took off. A m a j o r new business that has had a very positive impact on our country was made possible. And, of course, no one has managed to monopolize it. So we call, first, for policymakers to focus more on making good things happen. We do not suggest safeguards are not needed. They are. But we do say that in instances where a judgment call is needed, we ought to place more emphasis on making sure that new services are needed. Also, we talk about what may happen if those new offerings are not available, both from an economic and a public services standpoint.
Less faction A second m a j o r message in T E L E C O M 2000 is the need for all the players in telecommunications to spend less time jockeying for temporary advantage, and more time trying to work together to make possible the kind of new communications and information infrastructure that the country needs. One of the experts who helped us put this report together commented that "we're all in the same boat." The United States today faces strong economic challenges from abroad. If we do not get our act together better, we are going to have more trade and competitiveness difficulties than is true today. A way in which the government could reduce the level of divisiveness in telecommunications would be to encourage companies to compete more in the market than in front of federal agencies and courts. N T I A T E L E C O M 2000 thus reiterates earlier N T I A recommendations for regulatory reforms, as well as changes in the AT&T consent decree that would centralize responsibility in the expert regulatory agency, the FCC.
CONCLUSION The people who work in the telecommunications industry are fortunate. Their industry is strong and growing. They also have the opportunity to make a major, further contribution to the overall national welfare. Over the next few years, government communications policy makers will face a delicate balancing act. On the one hand, we have to develop means of allowing all of the companies in this key industry to make the m a x i m u m contribution. On the other hand, we have to do that in a way that ensures both the appearance and reality of fairness and, in that way, maintains the general consensus in favor of less regulatory, more competitive solutions. If both the industry and the government do things right, the United States will benefit greatly as a result.