National Academies Press: OpenBook

Revolution in the U.S. Information Infrastructure (1995)

Chapter: Antitrust Enforcement and the Telecommunications Revolution: Friends, Not Enemies

« Previous: Current Trends and Likely Futures in Wireless Systems
Suggested Citation:"Antitrust Enforcement and the Telecommunications Revolution: Friends, Not Enemies." National Academy of Engineering. 1995. Revolution in the U.S. Information Infrastructure. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4944.
×
Page 63
Suggested Citation:"Antitrust Enforcement and the Telecommunications Revolution: Friends, Not Enemies." National Academy of Engineering. 1995. Revolution in the U.S. Information Infrastructure. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4944.
×
Page 64
Suggested Citation:"Antitrust Enforcement and the Telecommunications Revolution: Friends, Not Enemies." National Academy of Engineering. 1995. Revolution in the U.S. Information Infrastructure. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4944.
×
Page 65
Suggested Citation:"Antitrust Enforcement and the Telecommunications Revolution: Friends, Not Enemies." National Academy of Engineering. 1995. Revolution in the U.S. Information Infrastructure. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4944.
×
Page 66
Suggested Citation:"Antitrust Enforcement and the Telecommunications Revolution: Friends, Not Enemies." National Academy of Engineering. 1995. Revolution in the U.S. Information Infrastructure. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4944.
×
Page 67
Suggested Citation:"Antitrust Enforcement and the Telecommunications Revolution: Friends, Not Enemies." National Academy of Engineering. 1995. Revolution in the U.S. Information Infrastructure. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4944.
×
Page 68
Suggested Citation:"Antitrust Enforcement and the Telecommunications Revolution: Friends, Not Enemies." National Academy of Engineering. 1995. Revolution in the U.S. Information Infrastructure. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4944.
×
Page 69
Suggested Citation:"Antitrust Enforcement and the Telecommunications Revolution: Friends, Not Enemies." National Academy of Engineering. 1995. Revolution in the U.S. Information Infrastructure. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4944.
×
Page 70
Suggested Citation:"Antitrust Enforcement and the Telecommunications Revolution: Friends, Not Enemies." National Academy of Engineering. 1995. Revolution in the U.S. Information Infrastructure. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4944.
×
Page 71
Suggested Citation:"Antitrust Enforcement and the Telecommunications Revolution: Friends, Not Enemies." National Academy of Engineering. 1995. Revolution in the U.S. Information Infrastructure. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4944.
×
Page 72
Suggested Citation:"Antitrust Enforcement and the Telecommunications Revolution: Friends, Not Enemies." National Academy of Engineering. 1995. Revolution in the U.S. Information Infrastructure. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4944.
×
Page 73
Suggested Citation:"Antitrust Enforcement and the Telecommunications Revolution: Friends, Not Enemies." National Academy of Engineering. 1995. Revolution in the U.S. Information Infrastructure. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4944.
×
Page 74
Suggested Citation:"Antitrust Enforcement and the Telecommunications Revolution: Friends, Not Enemies." National Academy of Engineering. 1995. Revolution in the U.S. Information Infrastructure. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4944.
×
Page 75
Suggested Citation:"Antitrust Enforcement and the Telecommunications Revolution: Friends, Not Enemies." National Academy of Engineering. 1995. Revolution in the U.S. Information Infrastructure. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4944.
×
Page 76
Suggested Citation:"Antitrust Enforcement and the Telecommunications Revolution: Friends, Not Enemies." National Academy of Engineering. 1995. Revolution in the U.S. Information Infrastructure. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4944.
×
Page 77
Suggested Citation:"Antitrust Enforcement and the Telecommunications Revolution: Friends, Not Enemies." National Academy of Engineering. 1995. Revolution in the U.S. Information Infrastructure. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4944.
×
Page 78
Suggested Citation:"Antitrust Enforcement and the Telecommunications Revolution: Friends, Not Enemies." National Academy of Engineering. 1995. Revolution in the U.S. Information Infrastructure. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4944.
×
Page 79

Below is the uncorrected machine-read text of this chapter, intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text of each book. Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.

Antitrust Enforcement and the Telecommunications Revolution: Friends, Not Enemies ROBERT E. LITAN I will start with a confession: I am a telecommunications neo- phyte, having only recently learned how to use the Internet. But I know from my job and from casual reading that the United States— and indeed the world—is in the midst of a telecommunications revo- lution that will have profound consequences for every aspect of our lives. At the global level, telecommunications helped end the Cold War. The former communist countries could not control the flow of information that personal computers and television delivered about life in the West. Ultimately, political freedom itself spilled over from West to East. Within the United States, telecommunications products and ser- vices are powering economic growth. According to the Council of Economic Advisers, firms engaged in the information-services sector of our economy—including computers, software, telecommunica- tions services, and equipment—accounted for 9 percent of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product in 1993. Assuming the admin- istration’s telecommunications reform proposals are enacted by the next Congress, this share could double over the following decade. Meanwhile, advances in telecommunications have been trans- forming our daily lives. It is difficult to remember life without fax machines or e-mail, both of which have dramatically speeded up 63

64 ROBERT E. LITAN communications on the job. Some people may already feel the same about videoconferencing, which may be standard practice in rela- tively few companies now but surely will be common throughout the country in just a few short years. In our homes, the telecommunications revolution has already dramatically lowered long-distance telephone rates, while bringing dozens of video channels to our television sets. Millions of Ameri- cans are now also using online information services and the Internet to communicate with each other, with a growing number of libraries and other databases, and with people around the world. The future promises even more video interactivity. Once they are fully built, fiber optic highways and satellites will do for video what copper wire did for voice: allow individuals to interact with one another rather than passively receive information or entertainment. These are not simply pie-in-the-sky predictions. By the time the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) completes its auction, investors are likely to have plunked down billions of dollars for spec- trum rights that will enable providers to deliver these services to the public. The question this paper addresses is: What public-policy issues are raised by the spread of computer- and video-based interactivity? There are many, and I certainly do not feel competent to address them all. Instead, I would like to concentrate on two very simple but powerfully important objectives that government policy makers should focus on as the telecommunications revolution proceeds. First, policies should be in place to assure that firms in all parts of the telecommunications industry—those building the infrastruc- ture and those developing the content that will travel over it—have the maximum incentive to innovate and to develop and deliver prod- ucts and services of the highest quality at the lowest cost. Second, the telecommunications services that are generated should be made available broadly, not just to the fortunate few. In- formation networks have positive externalities: the more people hooked up to the networks, the more valuable the hookups are for each participant. Moreover, information is what economists call a public good. We educate our children, at public expense, by giving them the infor- mation and skills they will need to lead productive lives, because it is in everyone’s interest for all kids to grow up to be responsible adults.

ANTITRUST ENFORCEMENT 65 Similarly, we provide libraries, also at public expense, so that knowl- edge is made freely available to all segments of society. Now that technology is revolutionizing the way information is delivered—over wires, over the air, and through computers—it is vitally important that all citizens continue to have at least some ac- cess to the information services of the modern age. This does not mean that everyone should be entitled to order movies on demand in their homes at subsidized rates. However, it does mean that great attention will have to be paid to ensuring that all of us have some basic level of access to the services and information that will be delivered over the information highways of tomorrow. By making sure that competition governs the telecommunications marketplace, the fed- eral government can both provide incentives for innovation and en- courage widespread availability of new telecommunications services. This is an objective shared by all government agencies respon- sible for telecommunications policy: the FCC, the Department of Commerce, and the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice. The rest of this paper will explain why competition is so important and how, in concrete terms, the Antitrust Division in particular has promoted and will continue to promote innovation in the telecommu- nications industry by protecting the competitive process. THE IMPORTANCE OF COMPETITION The notion that competition is critical to the development of telecommunications services has not been, and may still not be, ac- cepted by everyone. For decades following the invention of the telephone, for example, it was widely assumed that telephone service was a natural monopoly. Public policy makers embraced this as- sumption by allowing AT&T to run the nation’s telephone network free from competitive challenge. More recently, some parties have suggested that the need for standards in computer-based systems is incompatible with competi- tion. For example, Bill Gates has asserted that Microsoft’s operating systems for personal computers have become industry standards and thus have characteristics of a natural monopoly. While each of these arguments in support of natural monopoly may be appealing superfi- cially, neither, on closer examination, justifies the rejection of the central role of competition that they both imply.

66 ROBERT E. LITAN Consider first the claim of natural monopoly in the telephone business. This notion was roundly rejected when the Department of Justice and Judge Harold Greene forced the breakup of AT&T in the early 1980s. The breakup was not a universally popular move, even inside the Reagan administration. In fact, according to published accounts, President Reagan, Secretary of Commerce Malcolm Baldrige, and Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger believed that the AT&T monopoly was a national treasure that should not be bro- ken up. But William Baxter, then the assistant attorney general for antitrust at the Justice Department and now professor emeritus at Stanford Law School, insisted that only by divesting the regional telephone monopolies from AT&T’s long-distance monopoly would long-distance competitors to AT&T have a fair chance to hook up to local telephone networks. Professor Baxter and Judge Greene were right. Look what has happened since the breakup: • Over 100 companies have entered the long-distance telephone market, knocking AT&T’s share of that business down from 100 percent to 60 percent. Real residential long-distance rates have fallen by about half, in part due to the increased competition. While the long-distance market could use even more competition—AT&T, MCI, and Sprint today account for about 90 percent of the business— the entry of so many firms rebuts the view that long-distance tele- phone service is a natural monopoly; • A less well-recognized but potentially even more important product of the AT&T breakup is that it helped unleash the fiber optics revolution, making possible an exciting range of telecommunications capabilities. Corning Glass invented fiber optic cable and attempted to sell it to AT&T in the early 1970s, but AT&T was a monopolist and probably had little interest in ripping up its existing copper-wire network in order to replace it with fiber. It was not until AT&T was broken up that the use of fiber optics really took off. In part, this was because AT&T, Corning, and others working on fiber optics were by then able to bring down costs. Fiber became cheaper than the micro- wave technology that was once thought to be the main competitor to copper wires. However, the breakup itself almost certainly pushed things along. New entrants into the long-distance telephone busi- ness, like Sprint, MCI, and their smaller competitors, turned to Corn-

ANTITRUST ENFORCEMENT 67 ing for fiber optic cables. Eventually, AT&T too was forced to install fiber in order to match the quality and low cost of its competitors’ services. Now that long-distance telephone markets have successfully withstood the dissolution of the natural-monopoly model, the next candidate for competition is the local telephone business. Today, this market is virtually monopolized by the regional Bell operating com- panies (RBOCs), which carry more than 99 percent of the local traf- fic in their regions. The local market may look very different in the near future, however. It is possible, if not likely, that within a few years the coaxial cable owned by cable television operators will be delivering local telephone traffic, just as it is doing today for nearly 400,000 custom- ers in the United Kingdom. In addition, a variety of wireless tech- nologies—including cellular, specialized mobile radio, and the new personal communications services portions of the spectrum—could create powerful competition to land-line telephone services. Of course, cable and other alternatives to the RBOCs’ local tele- phone monopolies will arrive only if state and local regulators permit them to compete. So far, only a few states have taken steps to remove restrictions to entry into the telephone business. Later, this paper will address the need for other states to eliminate these artificial and un- necessary barriers to entry. What about the claim that the need for standards leaves little room for competition? This argument is flat wrong. It may well be true that once a standard has been accepted in the marketplace, such as the QWERTY layout on a typewriter, competition is no longer possible. But, with the one qualification I will discuss shortly, com- petition should actually govern the development of the standards themselves. Microsoft proves this point. Microsoft gained a monopoly in operating systems for personal computers in the 1980s by success- fully marketing DOS and Windows, which became industry stan- dards. There was nothing unlawful about this. But then the company adopted certain licensing practices—”per processor” licenses that taxed competing operating systems and set lengthy terms and large minimum commitments. This effectively froze competing operating systems out of the original equipment market, the largest channel for

68 ROBERT E. LITAN distributing this type of software. The Justice Department sued Microsoft because these practices, coupled with restrictive nondis- closure agreements imposed on developers of applications software, unlawfully entrenched the company’s monopoly and thereby deprived competitors of a fair shot at becoming the next standard. Microsoft has signed a consent decree, which the District Court for the District of Columbia disapproved in February 1995 but which I fully expect the Court of Appeals to approve on appeal. When it does, this decree will help level the playing field in the PC operating systems market. The Microsoft case teaches an important lesson. It is perfectly legitimate to own a technology or product that becomes a standard, but it is against the law to erect barricades to competing, would-be standards. This proposition is especially important in high-technol- ogy industries, where rapid innovation may create frequent opportu- nities for new standards to replace old ones. If the owners of the old standards are allowed to use any means to block entry of the new, then innovation itself will be discouraged and consumers will lose out. The one qualification to the proposition that competition should govern the development of standards is that in some cases, it may be in society’s interest for competitors to agree on standards, or, in effect, to work jointly to create standards. For example, manufactur- ers may lawfully cooperate to set quality standards, saving regulators the time and expense of certification. A number of bodies in the telecommunications and computer fields perform similar functions. But even in these cases, the joint-venture partners in the stan- dards process must not abuse their legitimate collaboration to distort the competitive process. Thus, standards-setting bodies should be open to all parties who meet reasonable criteria for membership. In addition, the standards-setting process must be a fair one and not serve simply as a device for preventing new competitors or new standards from entering the market. In sum, competition must remain the central governing principle for the information age. Competition encourages continued innova- tion and guarantees consumers the lowest prices for telecommunica- tions and information services, and by so doing it promotes the wide- spread availability of these services. If there is any doubt about these propositions, one need only look to Europe and Japan. Both regions have continued to follow the

ANTITRUST ENFORCEMENT 69 state-directed, monopoly model in telecommunications, and they now find themselves playing catch-up to the United States. For instance, it was recently reported that Japan’s telephone monopoly, NTT, is far behind the U.S. regional telephone companies in laying fiber optic cable (Hamilton, 1994). In addition, European governments have been taken to task for sheltering their telecommunications giants from both domestic and foreign competition (The Economist, 1994). This criticism is not hard to understand. One recent study projects that an end to telephone monopolies in Europe would not only lower prices but improve quality by 40 percent (Hudson, 1994). The benefits of competition are being recognized closer to home. In September, Canadian regulators took a major step to promote competition by allowing telephone companies to transmit video im- ages and by opening up local telephone markets to competition from cable television operators and other sources. If the United States wants to continue to lead the world in telecommunications innova- tion, it must act soon to move in a direction similar to Canada’s; that is, it must clear away the remaining obstacles to fair and effective competition throughout the telecommunications industry. PRESERVING AND PROMOTING COMPETITION THROUGH ANTITRUST ENFORCEMENT Along with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division is charged by federal law with pro- tecting and promoting competition. Next, this paper will consider how the division has been fulfilling this mandate in ways that affect the future of telecommunications. Merger Enforcement One of the defining characteristics of the current revolution in the telecommunications field is the dizzying pace of corporate mergers. It seems that not a week goes by without one or two major mergers or corporate alliances being announced, each advertised as an ideal way to accelerate the building of the information super- highway by combining the unique talents and expertise of the two partners. In many cases, this may be true, and the division will not stand in

70 ROBERT E. LITAN the way of these arrangements. However, we draw the line, as the law requires us to, at mergers that threaten to concentrate economic power in particular markets or to erect barriers to the entry of com- petitors. Mergers involving telecommunications and computer firms can pose special problems for those who enforce antitrust laws, because many of the firms in these industries already have dominant, or even monopoly, positions. The seven RBOCs, for example, each currently has a monopoly in local telephone service. The same is true for almost all cable television firms in the markets they serve. Other high-technology firms also have substantial market power in various lines of business. Firms that are already dominant in their markets surely know that neither the division nor the FTC is likely to permit them to engage in horizontal acquisitions, that is, purchases of direct com- petitors. As a result, many of the high-technology mergers we have seen so far involve the marriages of firms dominant in one market with firms in related markets—such as RBOCs proposing mergers with cable companies, telephone companies active in different geo- graphic areas proposing mergers, and so on. The critical question posed by these mergers is whether they will allow one or both of the firms with dominance in one market to extend market power to a second market—a special danger where the acquiring firm is a regu- lated monopoly. If so, antitrust enforcers try to persuade the parties to revise their plans in ways that remove the anticompetitive effects of the transaction. If this fails, we will sue to halt the merger. Two recent examples demonstrate how it is possible to prune the anticompetitive effects from otherwise lawful telecommunications mergers. The first is the union between AT&T and McCaw Cellular Communication, both dominant players in their respective markets. As noted earlier, AT&T still has about 60 percent of the long-dis- tance telephone market. Overall, McCaw carries about 30 percent of the nation’s cellular traffic, but in some regions of the country this figure is closer to 50 percent. In seeking to acquire McCaw, AT&T clearly wanted to provide seamless local and long-distance cellular service to customers. Without any conditions, however, this proposed merger posed risks to competition in several markets. Under the original proposal, the parties wanted to be able to market to their customers a com-

ANTITRUST ENFORCEMENT 71 bined long-distance/local-service cellular package, without giving them a choice of another long-distance carrier. Given McCaw’s market power in various localities and AT&T’s market power in long-distance, this proposal could have significantly distorted com- petition in the long-distance market by diverting customers away from other long-distance companies based on factors other than qual- ity or price, further entrenching AT&T’s already dominant position in long distance. To address this problem, the division conditioned its approval of the merger on McCaw’s providing to competing long-distance carri- ers equal access to its subscribers. This is what the RBOCs now are required to do for long-distance traffic on their land lines, and the Department of Justice has proposed that they do the same if they are allowed to provide long-distance service to cellular customers. In addition, the consent decree that the parties signed prohibits AT&T from offering its local and long-distance cellular services as a bundle; the company must instead separately price each service. The AT&T/McCaw merger also posed a threat to competition in local cellular markets. AT&T currently is the dominant manufac- turer of equipment for cellular carriers, including many of the RBOCs that compete with McCaw. Given the nature of cellular systems, once a carrier begins purchasing a particular brand of equipment, it gets locked in to that brand for some period of time. The additional danger posed by the merger was that AT&T could exploit its position in the cellular-equipment market by raising prices or denying or de- laying the delivery of parts and other services to RBOCs that com- pete with McCaw in local cellular service. Knowing this, rival cellu- lar carriers and AT&T/McCaw could implicitly decide to keep cellular prices high. The consent decree prevents this result by pro- hibiting AT&T from such conduct. In addition, it addresses the lock- in problem by allowing, under certain circumstances, cellular equip- ment customers of AT&T to sell back their equipment to AT&T, if they want to, at cost minus a reasonable allowance for depreciation. The second telecommunications merger approved subject to im- portant conditions is the purchase by British Telecommunications (BT) of a 20 percent interest in MCI, as well as the creation of a global joint venture between the two companies. This transaction raised important telecommunications issues in an international con- text. Like AT&T and McCaw, MCI wanted its equity partnership

72 ROBERT E. LITAN with BT in order to enhance its ability to offer seamless telecommu- nications services, in this case on a worldwide basis. If BT did not have market power in telecommunications services in the United Kingdom, it is unlikely that either the proposed equity investment by BT in MCI or the joint venture would pose any competitive risks. But BT was and remains the dominant telephone company in the United Kingdom. By virtue of this dominance, BT would gain from the proposed transaction both the incentives and the ability to favor its joint venture with MCI in pricing, interconnection, and possibly other ways—all to the detriment of U.S. users of other global tele- communications providers. If this occurred, then the prices on tele- phone traffic between our two countries would increase. Accordingly, the division imposed several conditions on the BT/ MCI transaction. Most important, the parties agreed to publish de- tailed information about the terms and conditions of services that BT provides to the joint venture and to MCI. This information will give ammunition to any disfavored competitors that wish to lodge com- plaints with regulatory authorities in either the United States or the United Kingdom. Such a “transparency” provision is less intrusive and less costly, but no less effective, than direct regulation. In addition, the consent decree prohibits BT from providing to either the joint venture or to MCI confidential information about other international telecommunications providers. Moreover, the parties agreed that if a significant act of discrimination in favor of the joint venture or MCI occurs in the future, the department may seek modification of the decree to strengthen its nondiscrimination provisions. What about future mergers in the telecommunications industry? It is difficult to be specific, because some are pending now before the division. It is possible, however, to offer several broad comments on the relation between competition policy and mergers in the industry. There has been much talk about “the” information superhigh- way. In fact, several highways appear to be in the works—land-line telephone, land-line cable, and various wireless technologies—all competing to deliver voice and video content to businesses and homes around the country. No one really knows which of these highways will be successful. That is what markets are for—to let the firms that are now spending billions of dollars to build these highways fight it out.

ANTITRUST ENFORCEMENT 73 For those charged with enforcing the antitrust laws, three con- cerns are paramount. First, we do not want any highway owner that now has a regu- lated monopoly in its market to cross-subsidize. That is, cable opera- tors who want to enter telephone markets, or local telephone compa- nies that may eventually gain entry into long-distance markets, should fund their expansion only from the capital markets and not from their customers. The same is true for regulated telephone companies hop- ing to offer video and other services. To allow any other result is to permit the marketplace to favor monopolists, to the detriment of consumers. Second, at least for the next several years, we should not allow the owner of any one highway in a given geographic area to merge with or buy out a competing highway. If, for example, local tele- phone companies were permitted to merge with their cable televi- sion competitors in the same service territory, neither firm would retain the incentive to develop and supply the new interactive ser- vices that consumers have been promised. This situation may change once technology affords consumers more ways to receive informa- tion in the home. In the meantime, however, it is prudent to prohibit for a reasonable period marriages of cable and telephone firms oper- ating in the same service areas; the administration has suggested 5 years. Third, we will be especially watchful of mergers or joint ven- tures between owners of highways and owners of content. Such transactions may create strong incentives for the integrated entity to deny competing programmers access to the highways. In such cases, we will be prepared either to block the merger or to condition it on “equal access” requirements that prevent such discrimination, as we did with TCI’s acquisition of Liberty Media. Removing Barriers To Entry It is one thing to prevent mergers that threaten to choke off competition. It is another to ensure that such competition is allowed to take place. Current law, however, largely presumes that certain telecommunications markets should be monopolies and therefore insulated from competition. Therefore, unless the Supreme Court holds that federal law is unconstitutional (as have three federal

74 ROBERT E. LITAN courts), local telephone companies will remain barred from offering video services in their service territories. As noted earlier, local telephone companies are legally insulated from competition in all but a few states. In addition, the consent decree governing the AT&T breakup prohibits the RBOCs from competing in long-dis- tance telephone services. In 1994, Congress came very close to enacting comprehensive legislation that would have paved the way for erasing each of these barriers to competition. The Clinton administration worked closely with Congress to achieve passage of this legislation and intends to continue that partnership in 1995. In the meantime, the administra- tion urges the states to remove barriers preventing new entrants in the local telephone business. New York, Wisconsin, Illinois, and a num- ber of other states have already taken such steps or will soon do so. Competition is vital if America is to maintain its leadership in telecommunications technologies and services. Competition also will best advance the goal of universal service, since competition will encourage providers to lower their own costs, and thus their prices to consumers. Still, even a vibrantly competitive telecommunications market- place will not deliver its services to all consumers. Some will lack the income to buy. Others services may be too costly for private suppliers profitably to provide. The most efficient and least distort- ing way to fill these gaps is to provide subsidies to those who would otherwise not be able to purchase competitively priced telecommuni- cations services. The legislation considered by Congress last year would have directed the appropriate federal and state regulatory bod- ies to move in this direction. CONCLUSION The message here has been a simple one. Monopolies in tele- communications are dead or dying. This is good news, for only through vigorous competition will the telecommunications revolu- tion we are now witnessing bring its full benefits to American con- sumers. The Justice Department’s Antitrust Division is working hard to make this happen. We hope that Congress will assist us in this task by enacting soon the comprehensive telecommunications legislation that is so sorely needed.

ANTITRUST ENFORCEMENT 75 REFERENCES Hamilton, D.P. Wall Street Journal. August 15, 1994. Getting wired: big fiber-optic project is private sector’s job, Japan reformers say. A1. Hudson, R.L. Wall Street Journal. September 30, 1994. World business (A special report): An industrial revolution. R20. The Economist. August 13, 1994. Europe’s dash for the future. 13.

Contributors STEVEN D. DORFMAN is a senior vice president and member of the Office of the Chairman of GM Hughes Electronics Corp. and its subsidiary, Hughes Aircraft Company, and president of the Hughes Telecommunications and Space Company. He joined Hughes in 1957 and, in subsequent years, held positions of increasing responsi- bility in management, systems engineering, and electro-optics. Mr. Dorfman was named to his present position in October 1993 after serving more than 2 years as president of Hughes Space and Commu- nications Company. Prior to Mr. Dorfman’s Space and Communica- tions Company assignment, he was president and chief executive officer of Hughes Communications Inc. (HCI), the Hughes subsid- iary that owns and operates communications satellites. Mr. Dorfman was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1992. He received his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Uni- versity of Florida and his master’s degree in the same field from the University of Southern California. ROBERT E. KAHN has been president of the Corporation for Na- tional Research Initiatives (CNRI) in Reston, Virginia since 1986. CNRI was created as a not-for-profit organization to provide leader- ship and funding for research and development of the national infor- mation infrastructure. From 1972 to 1985, he was a program man- 77

78 CONTRIBUTORS ager, deputy director, and ultimately director of the Information Pro- cessing Techniques Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. He is a member of the National Academy of Engi- neering, a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engi- neers, and twice recipient of the Secretary of Defense Meritorious Civilian Service Award. Dr. Kahn received his B.E.E. from City College of New York and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Princeton University. ROBERT E. LITAN is an associate director of the Office of Man- agement and Budget. At the time this paper was written, Dr. Litan was deputy assistant attorney general in the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Justice Department, where he supervised the division’s civil non-merger enforcement program and the development of the di- vision’s policies affecting regulated industries. He came to this posi- tion in September 1993, following 9 years as a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he also was director of two research centers in the institution’s Economics Studies Program. Dr. Litan formerly was a partner and then counsel to Powell, Goldstein, Frazer & Murphy, an associate at Arnold & Porter, and the regulatory and energy specialist for President Carter’s Council of Economic Advis- ers. He has a B.S. in economics from the Wharton School of Finance, a J.D. from Yale Law School, and a Ph.D. in economics from Yale University. JOHN E. MAJOR is the senior vice president and assistant chief corporate staff officer for Motorola. In those roles, he oversees Motorola’s product, software, and manufacturing research, as well as manages Motorola’s global telecommunications network. One of his key initiatives is leading Motorola’s effort to be a global leader in software technology. Previously, he managed the Worldwide Sys- tems Group that developed and manufactured private voice and data radio systems for public-safety and business users. Mr. Major serves on the boards of directors of the Telecommunications Industry Asso- ciation and the Electronics Industry Association. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, where he serves on the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board. His degrees include a B.S. in mechanical and aerospace engineering from the University of Rochester, an M.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of

CONTRIBUTORS 79 Illinois, an M.B.A. from Northwestern University, and a J.D. from Loyola University. JOHN S. MAYO is president emeritus of AT&T Bell Laboratories. He served as president from July 1991 until March 1995. Through- out his career at Bell Laboratories, Dr. Mayo has played an important role in the development of digital technologies that have brought the world to the threshold of the information age. Dr. Mayo is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). Among his awards is the 1990 National Medal of Technology, given for his contributions to the technological foundations for information age communications. Dr. Mayo was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1979. He received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from North Carolina State University in 1952, 1953, and 1955, respectively. ROBERT W. STEARNS is vice president of corporate development for the Compaq Computer Corp. He directs the company’s strategic planning and business development activities, including acquisitions, joint ventures and alliances, advanced market research, and technol- ogy assessment. He is also responsible for coordinating legislative policy issues and Compaq’s involvement in various technical stan- dards-setting organizations and trade associations. Mr. Stearns joined Compaq in July 1993 from McKinsey & Co., where he served as a consultant to high-technology clients. He previously held senior management positions at a number of technology companies, includ- ing Motorola/Codex, Banyan Systems, Motorola’s Information Sys- tems Group, and Management Technologies Inc., a decision-support software company that he founded. Mr. Stearns speaks and writes frequently on matters related to the computer and telecommunica- tions industries and innovation in technological organizations. He graduated with a B.S. degree in chemistry from Brown University in 1971 and an M.S. degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- nology in 1973.

Revolution in the U.S. Information Infrastructure Get This Book
×
Buy Paperback | $17.00 Buy Ebook | $13.99
MyNAP members save 10% online.
Login or Register to save!
Download Free PDF

While societies have always had information infrastructures, the power and reach of today's information technologies offer opportunities to transform work and family lives in an unprecedented fashion. This volume, a collection of six papers presented at the 1994 National Academy of Engineering Meeting Technical Session, presents a range of views on the subject of the revolution in the U.S. information infrastructure. The papers cover a variety of current issues including an overview of the technological developments driving the evolution of information infrastructures and where they will lead; the development of the Internet, particularly the government's role in its evolution; the impact of regulatory reform and antitrust enforcement on the telecommunications revolution; and perspectives from the computer, wireless, and satellite communications industries.

  1. ×

    Welcome to OpenBook!

    You're looking at OpenBook, NAP.edu's online reading room since 1999. Based on feedback from you, our users, we've made some improvements that make it easier than ever to read thousands of publications on our website.

    Do you want to take a quick tour of the OpenBook's features?

    No Thanks Take a Tour »
  2. ×

    Show this book's table of contents, where you can jump to any chapter by name.

    « Back Next »
  3. ×

    ...or use these buttons to go back to the previous chapter or skip to the next one.

    « Back Next »
  4. ×

    Jump up to the previous page or down to the next one. Also, you can type in a page number and press Enter to go directly to that page in the book.

    « Back Next »
  5. ×

    To search the entire text of this book, type in your search term here and press Enter.

    « Back Next »
  6. ×

    Share a link to this book page on your preferred social network or via email.

    « Back Next »
  7. ×

    View our suggested citation for this chapter.

    « Back Next »
  8. ×

    Ready to take your reading offline? Click here to buy this book in print or download it as a free PDF, if available.

    « Back Next »
Stay Connected!