Anyone who has spent significant time exploring the Internet or
other online services (uh, "cerfing the net" ?) has some appreciation
for the variety of information available and the difficulty of finding
anything in particular.
The chances are, however, that this situation will improve with
the arrival of new products and services for cataloging and indexing
of network-based content. Personal interactions, especially with
people in other countries or merely far away, can be a perspective-
shifting and culturally broadening experience and represent another
important positive value. The business potential of the Internet is
increasingly apparent.
If systems like the Internet become critical parts of national
and global infrastructure, then universal access to them will be vital.
Public policies that encourage universal availability of access would
be a logical and desirable outcome. I hope and believe that it will be
possible to provide universal access through competitive cost
reduction and, where appropriate, business incentives. Alternatives
that apply regulatory methods to achieve this goal are often found to
be inimical to good business practice and, therefore, artificial and
risky at best.
Vinton Cerf is senior vice president at MCI Communications Corp.
Peter Huber
Competition is irreconcilable with cross subsidies and price
averaging. Call it "overbuild" or call it "cream skimming," the bottom
line is the same. Competition de-averages costs, and makes service
no more (or less) universal than money itself. At first, competition
forces you to collect subsidies with a lighter hand, from a broader
base of contributors, and target them more carefully, toward a
narrower base of truly needy recipients. In the end, competition
eliminates subsidy entirely. But with luck, competition by then will
also have made the essentials very cheap indeed.
Anyone seriously interested in universal access has to make a
basic tactical choice between growth and re-distribution. One road to
universal access--the traditional one--emphasizes equality, and the
specter of society polarized between haves and have-nots. The other-
-now emerging--relies on competition to drive down prices, and the
vision of growth and new opportunity. The choice between the two
ultimately depends on which we want more, abundance or equality.
Regulation can mandate equality, but slows down the productive
engines of competition. Competition delivers abundance, but spreads
it around unequally, at least in the beginning.
Indeed, every new technology, every major advance, begins
life as a repudiation of "universal service." At first, some people
have it, but most don't. Cable, the prototypical broadband medium,
was originally viewed as a threat to "free" TV. Only the suburban
rich would get wired. Cable would "siphon" off all the best
programming. It would bleed off advertising dollars. For a decade,
the FCC did much to suppress cable. Yet cable has since become all
but universal anyway--over 90 percent of homes are passed by
cable, and over 60 percent subscribe. Despite all the anguish we went
through over "siphoning," and all the concern about how cable would
kill free broadcast, we ended up with more service all around.
Competition, this lesson teaches, can provide universal service too,
but in its own way. Competition provides universal access not by
spreading costs evenly among consumers, but by driving costs down,
and moving goods into the mass market.
We must ensure that the poorest do not miss out on the new
telecomputing abundance. But we must also ensure that different
kinds of service, different suppliers, different consumers, can
flourish in their diversity. Broadband cyberspace is still too new, too
variable, too unexplored, to be defined and homogenized by policy
makers into some sort of uniform telecom porridge. For the next
decade at least, this industry will be in profitable, productive,
unstable turmoil. Subsidies should be, and will be, directed toward
the least affluent. But in many areas, the question will be whether
policy makers have the strength, the vision--indeed the courage--to
stand by and do nothing. At a time when technology is propelling
really dramatic growth in an industry, the best thing to do is to stand
aside and let it rip. In today's environment, we will deliver more
service to more people by unleashing competition.
Peter Huber is a senior fellow with the Manhattan Institute for Policy
research, and author of the new book, Orwell's Revenge.
Ervin Duggan
We are a nation facing a triple crisis. In education, we face a
continuing crisis of access and excellence. In our commercial media,
we face a crisis of rising violence, rising exploitation, and declining
quality. In our political life, we face a crisis of unity, of community.
Public television is the one institution that is contributing
toward resolving each of those crises. We are doing it with
programming, educational services, workplace training, and
community outreach activities that address people's needs as
citizens, not just as consumers.
While others talk about a coming "information superhighway,"
PBS and public television stations nationwide have already created
such a highway--one dedicated not to commercial aims, but to the
public good. Congress, state governments, corporations, foundations,
universities, and generous individual givers, in a great partnership,
have invested billions in creating it over 25 years. This real
superhighway, with a brand-new, state-of-the-art, digital satellite
delivery system, builds on a glowing public television history of
technological pioneering--a history that includes such proud
achievements as America's largest nonprofit educational online
service; the first closed-captioning for deaf viewers, and the
landmark Descriptive Video Service for blind audiences. Best of all,
this superhighway reaches every American home and campus,
regardless of geographic, economic or social circumstance. It is a
valuable national resource--one worth preserving, and building
upon.
Ervin Duggan is president of the Public Broadcasting Service.
George Gilder
Universal access is not a legislative right (it took 50 years to achieve
this more or less in the phone business); universal access is a
technological and entrepreneurial achievement. As such it will occur
far sooner without obtrusive government intervention. For example,
universal access to cable has just been enacted through direct
broadcast satellite and universal access soon will be achieved
globally through low earth orbit satellites. Universal access to
broadband networks will be achieved most rapidly not through any
new tax or mandate but through permitting and encouraging
collaboration between phone companies and cable companies in their
own districts--the very breakthrough that is most doggedly opposed
by the incumbent proponents of what they call universal access, but
what in fact is merely a pretext for universal meddling by the
government.
George Gilder is a senior fellow with the Discovery Institute in
Seattle, WA, and is the author of the forthcoming book, Telecosm.
Ralph Nader
Twenty years ago universal service for telecommunications was
largely defined in terms of access to a telephone, radio and television
equipped with antennas. Today we are considering much more
sophisticated technologies to broadcast and transmit information, but
also much more sophisticated ways to meter and charge for use of
information services.
It is no longer enough to think about "universal access" in
terms of services that provide the conduit for information. We need
to think more generally about access to information content itself.
The attacks on public broadcasting and the shrinking resources for
public libraries are part of a larger attack on public goods and
universal access. We need to reaffirm our commitment to a new
generation of non-commercial information services that meet the
needs of a future generation. Funding for such services can be
financed by fees on businesses which use the public's
electromagnetic spectrum for free. Why should large corporations
enjoy free television and radio licenses, and why should telephone
companies be given free cellular licenses, while our nation's libraries,
schools and non-commercial information providers are struggling to
survive?
Do people want non-commercial information services? The
fastest growing information service is the Internet, which was
created by the government, and which features as its main attraction
a worldwide array of free information resources that can be searched
without charge and published very inexpensively.
Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate.
Larry Irving and Laura Breeden
In 1934 Congress passed the Communications Act, and with that
landmark legislation came what many regard as the formal adoption
of universal access to telecommunications as a policy goal. At that
time, fewer than half of America's households had a telephone on
their premises. Today, advances in technology and increased
competition in the telephone industry have made earlier definitions
of "universal access" obsolete. The Clinton Administration has made
reform of the laws governing telecommunications one of its top
priorities, and NTIA has conducted a series of field hearings, and an
online "virtual hearing," to seek comments from citizens about what
universal access should mean in a digital age.
Reform of universal access would be necessary even if there
were no redefinition issue. Many experts agree that current pricing
policies for voice telephone service are characterized by extensive
subsidies between and among services, although the extent of those
subsidies is a matter of considerable dispute. In other words, certain
services, such as long distance and business service, have been
overpriced to maintain low-cost residential voice service. Whether or
not that pricing structure was ever desirable as a matter of policy, it
could be sustained only in a market environment characterized by
monopoly provision of telephone service.
However, competition is becoming the norm in many
telecommunications services and equipment markets, driving prices
toward the costs of providing those services, and in doing so,
undermining traditional pricing structures that incorporate inter-
service subsidies.
The Administration believes that competition and universal
access are compatible. Competition tends to reduce prices for goods
and services, making them more affordable to more consumers and
ultimately reducing the need for subsidies. At the same time,
competition also increases the range of services and products
available to consumers, and potentially, their geographic reach as
well, further promoting universal access goals.
However, the emergence and expansion of competition forces
us to examine our traditional universal access funding. We need to
address important questions such as to what extent is "electronic
redlining" occurring or likely to occur? How can public institutions,
such as schools and libraries, serve as access points to the
information superhighway? How can we best target universal access
subsidies? What is the "minimum basket" of services or capabilities
that all Americans should be able to obtain today? Which services or
capabilities should be available to all on an optional basis? For
example, should all be able to reach emergency services such as
"911"?
We currently have the widest rich-poor gap since the Census
Bureau began keeping track in 1947: the top-fifth families have 44.6
percent of U.S. income while the bottom fifth have 4.4 percent. The
Clinton Administration is hoping that the new telecommunications
and information technologies can begin to bridge this gulf between
America's rich and poor. The Administration also wants to make sure
that public institutions--libraries, schools, hospitals, nonprofit
community groups--all actively participate in the NII. Why?
It goes directly to our universal access goals and our desire to
avoid creating a society of information haves and have-nots. We
believe that all Americans, not only those who own computers or
who live in affluent areas, must have access to the advanced
information technologies and services.
Public institutions can serve as their initial access points--"on-
ramps" to the information superhighway.
Larry Irving is Assistant Secretary of Commerce for
Telecommunications and Information. Laura Breeden is with the
National Telecommunications and Information Administration.
Lewis Perelman
Righteous worrying about information haves and have-nots is
symptomatic of the kind of entitlementarianism that led to the
recent electoral trashing of the Clinton administration and the
Democratic Party. On the issue of "access," the thinking of Democratic
policy leaders, notably Al Gore, Ed Markey, and Fritz Hollings, has
been completely convoluted. They've paid lip service to the reality
that the exponentially falling costs of information technology driven
by robust commercial competition are the best avenue for "universal
access." But, in the name of access, they've tried to compel the
telecommunications and information industries to give academia
"complimentary hookups" and other freebies.
This misguided policy is kind of like asking Henry Ford to
donate free engines to livery stables. We already are paying billions
in taxes to a government program that is supposed to assure
"universal access" to knowledge: public education. The $400 billion of
tax money the U.S. lavishes on education each year is about three
times the total combined revenues of the cable TV and telephone
industries.
Gore and company have gotten it exactly backward. Academia
is where the money for access needs to be taken from, not sent to.
Public funding of educational institutions should be shifted to a
"microvoucher" program giving the disadvantaged money to
purchase the high-tech tools and services of the Knowledge Age for
themselves.
Lewis Perelman is a senior fellow with the Discovery Institute and
author of School's Out: Hyperlearning, the New Technology, and the
End of Education.
Ken Robinson
It's not just "universal access," but "universal access at reasonable
and affordable rates" which constitutes the central reality of U.S.
telecommunications policy making today. Estimates of the support
flowing annually to support such access for residential customers
vary widely. MCI has estimated not more than $4 billion annually
would be needed (assuming one could start from scratch). The U.S.
Telephone Association has estimated the subsidy amounts to not less
than $22 billion. Counting both explicit, Federal Communications
Commission-devised and National Exchange Carriers Association-
administered subsidies--about $1 billion a year--as well as those
built into traditional federal and state telephone pricing structures,
$15 billion a year is a not-unreasonable, ballpark estimate. And,
while much of that subsidy likely benefits the 40 million Americans
living in non-metropolitan, rural areas, few of the estimated 88
million residential telephone subscribers today pay "full freight."
That is, they, too, are on the receiving end of a subsidy flow.
Economists for generations have been preaching the message of
cost-based pricing, wringing subsidies out of local residential
telephone rates, and compelling all to pay the "true cost" of service.
But below-cost residential telephone service benefits not only the
truly needy; it also constitutes one of the great middle-class support
regimes. And that simply isn't going to change.
Subsidized prices aren't consistent, of course, with the
increasing competitiveness of most telecommunications markets. But
if "rate rebalancing" along the lines economists (and others) long
have urged isn't a realistic prospect, what's the solution? Last
summer, Congress debated the merits of establishing a "universal
access fund" into which all competitors would pay--or, more
accurately, the customers of those competitors--and which would
reimburse firms that assumed an obligation to be a "carrier of last
resort" and thus provided "universal access."
That ambitious scheme had flaws. But it was a small step in the
right direction, and likely will resurface again. A special fund is not
actually needed. It would be reasonable to permit incumbent
telephone companies to socialize the defined cost of providing
universal access through the charges they assess long-distance and
other companies for local interconnection.
The point, however, is that maintaining universal access at
reasonable and affordable rates is a public policy challenge
telecommunications policy makers will have to face--preferably
sooner than later. This is especially true today, when there are a
variety of proposals--most worthy and meritorious--envisioning the
expansion of "universal access" to encompass not simply switched
voice but other offerings as well.
Universal access at reasonable and affordable prices, in
conclusion, may be regarded as a relict of the monopoly era
vanishing quickly from the U.S. telecommunications scene. But it is
an "electropolitical" imperative; and, safeguarding that
communications industry entitlement is a subject that will have to be
responsibly addressed.
Kenneth G. Robinson, Jr. is a communications attorney in Washington,
DC.
William Schrader
I am strongly opposed to any government regulation of the Internet
for universal access or other arguments. No universal access was
granted for cable TV, broadcast TV or radio, and these technologies
are nearly as ubiquitous as the telephone. This current push for U.S.
Internet universal access is coming from a combination of
government/telco parties who wish to continue their
monopolistic/regulatory franchise at the expense of the taxpayers.
There are no sound economic or social principles supporting these
arguments. Performance Systems International, Inc. is absolutely
opposed to these parties using historic voice universal access as a
political tool to extend and continue ideas that have been fully
overcome by capitalist economics.
PSI proposes that Congress wait a minimum of two years to see
what the deregulated Internet industry brings to rural Americans.
This two year "regulatory cooling off period" will give entrepreneurs
the opportunity to do what they do best and allow the monopolist
telephone companies and the government regulators time to "study"
the industry more while the rest of us do the work.
William L. Schrader is chairman, president & CEO of Performance
Systems International, Inc.
Rick Weingarten
The principal problem with the universal access debate as it now
stands is that it has no consistent frame of reference, no common
structure. When creating public policy for new technology, we
habitually search for existing models to use as a guide. The problem
with the NII is that we are flooded with old models that cannot apply
to the new infrastructure. The faulty logic goes as follows: The NII
will carry telephony; ergo we can apply the telephone concept of
universal service to the NII. The NII will carry broadcast-type
programming; ergo, we can apply broadcast regulatory concepts.
Though articulated in terms of broad social goals such as
"Universal Service," communications policy is at heart a collection of
specific solutions to specific problems directed at specific
technologies. Take telephone. "Universal service" was defined as
putting an affordable phone connection in every home by means of a
system of cross subsidies and rate regulation tailored to the
technology of telephony and a century-old industry structure.
Similar specificity characterizes policy for cable, broadcast, satellite,
wireless, and so on.
Such tailored policies are difficult, if not impossible, to stretch
over the new technologies and myriad of old and new services on the
NII. To attack the policy problem, we need to start from scratch,
break it down into specifics--goals and technologies--think about
policy for each piece, then reassemble it all back into a coherent
picture. I suggest the following matrix as a useful way to divide up
the problem.
One dimension is the different technological components of the
NII to which people need access. I suggest three.
o Communication links--the "wires" (and non-wires) that come to
the premises (e.g., these days, the phone line or broadcast signal).
o Customer Premise Equipment--The hardware and software
installed at the end of the link (e.g. a telephone, cable box, or TV set).
o The information and communication services that are offered
over the wire (e.g., the TV programming).
The second dimension is the access issue.
o Connectability: Is access even physically possible?
o Affordability: Can access be afforded?
o Provider: Does access include the possibility of providing
services?
o Functional: Is the access usable in terms of interface and user
skill? (Few Internet services would qualify as "universal" by this test
even if they were brought to every door.)
Here's the inevitable matrix:
It's possible to fill out this matrix for any existing
telecommunications service. Try it yourself. Pick one. Then, fill in
each cell, as appropriate, with the social goal and the particular
policy. I assert that, for any existing technology or service, the matrix
is mostly empty, while for the NII, it is mostly full. Which is why
existing definitions and policies make poor models!
Frederick Weingarten is executive director of the Computing
Research Association.