Recommendation 3. All segments of the U.S. telecommunications industry should increase their support for additional fundamental research. One avenue would be through participation in joint, cooperative research activities organized by the proposed ATRA.

As described above, the emphasis of industry research in recent years has shifted toward short-term product opportunities within the context of existing overall network architectures and away from the more fundamental and high-risk opportunities and major advances in cross-cutting end-to-end applications and services and supporting architectures that are essential to the long-term health of the U.S. telecommunications sector. Both equipment vendors and service providers (including providers of wireline telephony, wireless, broadband, Internet, satellite, and cable) should consider identifying and using mechanisms through which they could provide more support for fundamental research. ATRA, proposed in Recommendation 1, is intended to provide a way for the telecommunications industry to pool funds, spread risk, and share beneficial results through cooperative efforts between industry and academia that are jointly funded by industry and government.