Remarks by Vice President Al Gore 1994-01-11

[David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

is why the Administration supports the approach of the Brooks-Dingell
provision that requires the approval of the Department of Justice and
the Federal Communications Commission before the Regional Bells may
provide interexchange services -- most notably long distance.


     In working with Congress, the Administration will explore the
creation of incentives for the Regional Bells.  We want to increase the
transparency of those facility-based local services that raise concerns
associated with cross-subsidization and abuses of monopoly power.


     Our view of the entry of local telephone companies into cable
television also balances the advantages of competition against the
possibility of competitive abuse.  We will continue to bar the
acquisition of existing cable companies by telephone companies within
their local service areas.  We need this limitation to ensure that no
single giant entity controls access to homes and offices.  But to
increase diversity and benefit consumers, we will permit telephone
companies to provide video programming over new, open access systems.


     Even these measures, however, may not eliminate all scarcity in the
local loop -- those information byways that provide the last electronic
connection with homes and offices.  For some time, in many places, there
are likely to be only one or two broadband, interactive wires, probably
owned by cable or telephone companies.  In the long run, the local loop
may contain a wider set of competitors offering a broad range of
interactive services, including wireless, microwave and direct broadcast
satellite.


     But, for now, we cannot assume that competition in the local loop
will end all of the accrued market power of past regulatory advantage
and market domination.


     We cannot permit the creation of information bottlenecks that
adversely affect information providers who use the highways as a means
of supplying their customers.


     Nor can we can permit bottlenecks for information consumers who
desire programming that may not be available through the wires that
enter their homes or offices.


     Preserving the free flow of information requires open access, our
third basic principle.


     How can you sell your ideas, your information, your programs, if an
intermediary who is also your competitor has the means to unfairly block
your access to customers?  We can't subject the free flow of content to
artificial constraints at the hands of either government regulators or
would-be monopolists.


     We must also guard against unreasonable technical obstacles.  We
know how to do this; we've seen this problem in our past.  For example,
when railroad tracks were different sizes, a passenger could not travel
easily from a town served by one railroad to a town served by another.
But the use of standardized tracks permitted the creation of a national
system of rail transport.


     Accordingly, our legislative package will contain provisions
designed to ensure that each telephone carrier's networks will be
readily accessible to other users.  We will create an affirmative
obligation to interconnect and to afford nondiscriminatory access to
network facilities, services, functions and information.  We must also
explore the future of non-commercial broadcasting; there must be public
access to the information superhighway.


     These measures will preserve the future within the context of our
present regulatory structures.  But that is not enough.  We must move
towards a regulatory approach that encourages investment, promotes
competition and secures open access.  And one that is not just a
patch-work quilt of old approaches, but an approach necessary to promote
fair competition in the future.


     We begin with a simple idea: Similar entities must be treated
similarly.  But let's be clear:  our quest for equal treatment of
competing entities will not blind us to the economic realities of the
new information marketplace, where apparent similarities may mask
important differences.


     This idea is best expressed in the story about the man who went
into a restaurant and ordered the rabbit stew.


     It came, he took a few bites, then called the manager over.  "This
doesn't taste like rabbit stew!" he said.  "It tastes ...  well, it
tastes like horsemeat!"


     The manager was embarrassed. "I actually ran out of rabbit
this morning and I -- well, I put some horsemeat in."


     "How much horsemeat?"


     "Well -- it's equally divided."


     "What's that mean?"


     "One horse, one rabbit."


     The lesson is obvious.  A start-up local telephone company isn't
the same as a Baby Bell.


     What we favor is genuine regulatory symmetry.  That means
regulation must be based on the services that are offered and the
ability to compete -- and not on corporate identity, regulatory history
or technological process.


     For example, our legislative package will grant the Federal
Communications Commission the future authority, under appropriate
conditions, to impose non-discriminatory access requirements on cable
companies.  As cable and telephone service become harder and harder to
distinguish, this provision will help to ensure that labels derived from
past regulatory structures are not translated into inadvertent,unfair
competitive advantages.


     As different services are grouped within a single corporate
structure, we must ensure that these new, combined entities are not
caught in a cross-fire of conflicting and duplicative regulatory burdens
and standards.  This Administration will not let existing regulatory
structures impede or distort the evolution of the communications
industry.


     In the information marketplace of the future, we will obtain our
goals of investment, competition and open access only if regulation
matches the marketplace.  That requires a flexible, adaptable regulatory
regime that encourages the widespread provision of broadband,
interactive digital services.


     That is why the Administration proposes the creation of an
alternative regulatory regime that is unified, as well as symmetrical.
Our new regime would not be mandatory, but it would be available to
providers of broadband, interactive services.  Such companies could
elect to be regulated under the current provisions of the Communications
Act or under a new title, Title VII, that would harmonize those
provisions in order to provide a single system of regulation.  These
"Title VII" companies would be able to avoid the danger of conflicting
or duplicative regulatory burdens.  But in return, they would provide
their services and access to their facilities to others on a
nondiscriminatory basis.  The nation would thus be assured that these
companies would provide open access to information providers and
consumers and the benefits of competition, including lower prices and
higher-quality services, to their customers.


     This new method itself illustrates one of our five principles --
that government itself must be flexible.  Our proposals for symmetrical,
and ultimately unified, regulation demonstrate how we will initiate
governmental action that furthers our substantive principles but that
adapts, and disappears, as the need for governmental intervention
changes -- or ends.  They demonstrate, as well, the new relationship of
which I spoke earlier -- the private and public sectors working together
to fulfill our common goals.


     The principles that I have described thus far will build an open
and free information marketplace.  They will lower prices, stimulate
demand and expand access to the National Information Infrastructure.


     They will, in other words, help to attain our final basic principle
-- avoiding a society of information "haves" separate from a society of
information "have nots".


     There was a Washington Post headline last month: "Will the
`Information Superhighway' Detour the Poor?"


     Not if I have anything to do about it.  After all, governmental
action to ensure universal service has been part of American history
since the days of Ben Franklin's Post Office.  We will have in our
legislative package a strong mandate to ensure universal service in the
future -- and I want to explain why.


     We have become an information-rich society.  Almost 100% of
households have radio and television, and about 94% have telephone
service.  Three-quarters of households contain a VCR, about 60% have
cable, and roughly 30% of households have personal computers.


     As the information infrastructure expands in breadth and depth, so
too will our understanding of the services that are deemed essential.
This is not a matter of guaranteeing the right to play video-games.  It
is a matter of guaranteeing access to essential services.


     We cannot tolerate -- nor in the long run can this nation afford --
a society in which some children become fully educated and others do
not; in which some adults have access to training and lifetime
education, and others do not.


     Nor can we permit geographic location to determine whether the
information highway passes by your door.  I've often spoken about my
vision of a schoolchild in my home town of Carthage, Tennessee being
able to come home, turn on her computer and plug into the Library of
Congress.  Carthage is a small town.  Its population is only about
2,000.  So let me emphasize the point:  We must work to ensure that no
geographic region of the United States, rural or urban, is left without
access to broadband, interactive service.  Yes, we support opening the
local telephone exchange to competition. But we will not permit the
dismantling of our present national networks.


     All this won't be easy.  It is critically important, therefore,
that all carriers must be obliged to contribute, on an equitable and
competitively neutral basis, to the preservation and advancement of
universal service.


     The responsibility to design specific measures to achieve these
aims will be delegated to the Federal Communications Commission.  But
they will be required to do so.  Our basic goal is simple:  There will
be universal service; that definition will evolve as technology and the
infrastructure advance; and the FCC will get the job done.


     Reforming our communications laws is only one element of the
Administration's NII agenda.  We'll be working hard to invest in
critical NII technologies.  We'll promote applications of the NII in
areas such as scientific research, energy efficiency and advanced
manufacturing.  We'll work to deliver government services more
efficiently. We'll also update our policies to make sure that privacy
and copyright are protected in the networked world.


     We'll help law enforcement agencies thwart criminals and terrorists
who might use advanced telecommunications to commit crimes.


     The Administration is working with industry to develop the new
technologies needed for the National Information Infrastructure
Initiative.


     I have been working with the First Lady's Health Care Task Force,
former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, and others to develop ways we
can use networks to improve the quality of health care.


     Beginning this month, we are concentrating first on the legislative
package I outlined earlier.  We haven't invented all of the ideas it
contains ourselves.  Representatives Dingell and Brooks, Markey and
Fields--and Senators Hollings, Inouye, and Danforth have all focused on
these issues.


     In many ways our legislative goals reflect or complement that work.
We expect to introduce our legislative package shortly, and to work with
Congress to ensure speedy passage this year of a bill that will stand
the test of time.


     Our efforts are not, of course, confined only to government.  The
people in this room, and the private sector in general, symbolize
private enterprise.


     Our economic future will depend, in a real sense, on your
ability to grasp opportunity and turn it into concrete
achievement.


     As we move into the new era, we must never lose sight of our
heritage of innovation and entrepreneurship.


     In some ways, we appreciate that heritage more when we see
countries without it.  Last month, in Russia, I had a chance to see
close up a country that tried to hold back the information age -- a
country that used to put armed guards in front of copiers.  In a way we
should be grateful it did; that helped strengthen the desire of the
Russian people to end Communism.


     My hope is that now Central and Eastern Europe can use technology
and the free market to build democracy -- not thwart it.


     And my hope is that America, born in revolution, can lead the way
in this new, peaceful world revolution.


     Let's work on it together.


     A few months ago, Toni Morrison won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
It was a proud -- and signal -- moment for this country: recognition of
an African-American woman who has communicated her insight and narrative
power to readers all over the world.


     In her acceptance speech, Tony Morrison used one version of an old
story -- a parable, really -- to make an interesting point. It's of a
blind, old woman renowned for her wisdom, and a boy who decides to play
a trick on her. He captures a bird, brings it to her cupped in his
hands, and says "Old woman, is this bird alive or dead?"


     If she says "Dead," he can set it free.  If she says "Alive," the
boy will crush the bird.


     She thinks, and says, "The answer is in your hands."


     Toni Morrison's point is that the future of language is in our
hands.


     As we enter this new millennium, we are learning a new language.
It will be the lingua franca of the new age. It is made up of ones and
zeros and bits and bytes.  But as we master it ... as we bring the
digital revolution into our homes and schools ...  we will be able to
communicate ideas, and information -- in fact, entire Toni Morrison
novels -- with an ease never before thought possible.


     We meet today on common ground, not to predict the future but to
make firm the arrangements for its arrival. Let us master and develop
this new language together.


     The future really is in our hands.


     Thank you.