Competition should drive all markets, especially the building-out of the info-highway. I don’t believe government should build the information highway, and I don’t believe a monopolist should be given the exclusive license to build the information highway. But there are three principles to this competition: choice, opportunity, and fairness.
Predictor: Hundt, Reed
Prediction, in context:In a 1994 article for Wired magazine, John Heilemann, Washington correspondent for The Economist, interviews Federal Communications Commission Chairman Reed Hundt. Hundt tells Heilemann how he thinks the “information superhighway” should be built: ”Competition should drive all markets, especially the building-out of the info-highway. I don’t believe government should build the information highway, and I don’t believe a monopolist should be given the exclusive license to build the information highway. But there are three principles to this competition: choice, opportunity, and fairness. Choice means businesses that want to use the information highway should be able to choose their method of transportation.That’s similar to the concept of open access. It also means the consumers who want to use the information highway to communicate or to buy products and services should have multiple offerers. Opportunity means all businesses and all service providers should be able to use the information highway to sell their wares. I consider that to be a little closer to the open-access theme. That is also why you hear about questions of compatibility and interconnection. And then fairness is consistent with the way America thinks about competition in all industries. If you have an incumbent monopolist, you don’t let that monopolist act unfairly to deny competitors entry. But another aspect of fairness is that if you have an incumbent monopolist, you don’t want that monopolist to be able to charge consumers unreasonably high prices when they don’t have any choice – when it’s just take it or leave it from the same seller. It’s that aspect of fairness that is behind the Cable Act of 1992. On the Hill, Reps. Ed Markey, Jack Fields [R-Texas], Jack Brooks [D-Texas], and John Dingell [D-Michigan] and Sen. Fritz Hollings [D-South Carolina] and others are in concert on introducing competition in all communications markets. That’s the FCC’s policy. That’s the White House’s policy. And that’s a very difficult policy to implement, because the incumbent firms don’t easily allow new competitors in their markets. So, it’s a fight to introduce competition, but that’s a fight I eagerly take on.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: Role of Govt./Industry
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: Read Hundt: Wired Asks the Chair of the FCC About Cutting Cable Rates and Competition, Censoring Howard Stern, and John Malone’s Suggestion That He Be Taken Out and Shot
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.10/hundt_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney