Remarks of

William E. Kennard, chairman

Federal Communications Commission

at

George Mason University

Fairfax, VA

February 4, 2000

(as prepared for delivery)

"Connecting the Globe"

Thank you very much. It is a great pleasure to be here at George Mason
today with my good friend, Ray Akwule. President Merten, it is great to
see you again.

I really feel a connection with this university because I think that the
development agenda that I outlined for the FCC really had as its genesis
the conversations that I had with Raymond when we first got to know each
other shortly after I became Chairman of the FCC. Ray really did provide
a lot of the intellectual fodder for the work and the reports that we
do. He has kept us on schedule because we always plan our work to unveil
something at the AFCOM Conference every year. He has really kept us
motivated and working. I appreciate all your support and help.

We are all so privileged to be alive today at the beginning of what is
literally the third great revolution in the world economy. The first, of
course, was the agrarian revolution, then the industrial revolution, and
we are alive at the beginning of the third, the information revolution.
I think we will look back on this period in our lives and realize that
this transformation of the world economy was just in its infancy with
the birth of the Internet and the creation of world markets connected by
telecommunications technology. It is an exciting time.

I was the general counsel of the FCC when the Telecommunications Act of
1996 was being debated and lobbied on Capitol Hill, and that, of course,
became the most monumental revision of our telecommunications laws since
the 1934 Communications Act.

The interesting thing about that law, though, is that the Internet is
hardly mentioned in the Act. I think there are two references to it. The
reason for that is that, in 1994 and 1995, when that Act was being
produced, the Internet was just being born.

In 1994, there were 3 million on-line users in the world. Today, there
are almost 200 million: 80 million in the United States alone. So we
went from a dead stop in 1994 to 200 million users today.

Nothing has grown that fast in the history of communications
technologies. If you compare that to television, radio, telegraph,
telephone, nothing has grown that fast. It is revolutionizing the way
people live, the way they work, the way they do business. It is making
all of us much more productive and competitive in our daily lives
because it fundamentally changes the way that people access and process
information. In a knowledge-based economy, which the Information Age is
all about, those who control and process information have a distinct
competitive advantage.

That means that those people in the world who have access to these tools
are going to be more competitive. They are going to be more affluent.
They are going to be more connected to what is happening in the world.
The pace of change is so fast that we have to make sure that the entire
world has access to this technology.

I was in Europe last week talking to my counterparts in various European
governments. I had been there in January of 1999 for a similar round of
meetings. The difference this year was incredible. Last year people
listened politely and we had our 15 or 20-minute meetings, and it was
over.

This year I spent hours with my counterparts. They were talking notes.
People at the highest levels of government were seeking me out because
they want to know how we have created this Internet miracle in the
United States.

The fact is the world is waking up to the Internet and its power to
transform and uplift economies, and we are fortunate in the United
States because we have discovered the formula for making it happen. That
formula was outlined by Vice President Al Gore in 1994. He gave what has
become a very famous speech to the ITU Development Conference in Buenos
Aires.

In it he outlined how, as a world, we can create a global information
infrastructure. The the building blocks for that infrastructure are a
privatized telecommunications industry, liberalization, open networks,
strong independent regulatory agencies with the power to break up
incumbent monopolies, and the embracing of competition as the organizing
principle of our law and policy. That is what we have done in the United
States.

The net result of that is the Internet, the wireless revolution, the
fastest growing telecommunications network the world has ever known.

The formula works. It was incorporated into the World Trade Organization
Basic Telecommunications Agreement which became, in essence, the world
framework for bringing technology around the world and creating this
global information infrastructure.

But what we can not lose sight of is the fact that you cannot have a
truly global information infrastructure unless it includes an African
information infrastructure, a Latin American information infrastructure,
an Asian information infrastructure and a Central European information
infrastructure. In essence, we have to make sure that these world
networks are truly global in their reach.

We have a lot of work to do because today we debate in Washington at the
FCC and on Capitol Hill about how we are going to build broadband
networks and bring multiple megabits of bandwidth into American homes.
That vision is becoming reality in this country.

But the fact is that 50 percent of people in the world have not even
used the telephone. We are not talking about the Internet. Fifty percent
of the world has not made a telephone call, and so we have a lot of work
to do.

The good news is that world governments are starting to focus on this
for the simple reason that a network is more valuable if it connects
more people. E-commerce is more powerful if you can touch more consumers
around the world. The market incentives are lined up to build these
global networks, but we have a lot of work to do.

The other good news here is that in a lot of parts of the world where
people do not have telephone networks they can leapfrog some of the
infrastructure that we have had to invest in. Many developing countries
are skipping the copper wire generation of technology and going directly
to satellite and wireless, and that is a great thing because it is a
more efficient way of building networks.

Well, what we have tried to do at the FCC is keep people focused on the
fact that the global information infrastructure must be truly global,
and that means that we have an obligation in the United States and in
those countries that have embraced the WTO to make it real for
developing countries. That means that those of us who have embraced
independent regulators as sort of a fundamental building block of the
global infrastructure have an obligation to go out and help these
emerging independent regulatory authorities. That is what our
development initiative is all about.

That is why in August we built on our development initiative by
traveling to Africa and meeting with a group of emerging independent
regulatory authorities in Southern Africa. It is called TRASA --
Telecommunications Regulators Association of Southern Africe. It
includes 14 nations of that region. Most of them are new, emerging,
regulatory authorities.

They are hungry for information about how we have created an FCC, how it
works, how we have been able to break open markets and unleash capital.

The most important thing that developing countries can do is to attract
capital to build these networks, because we know they are not going to
be built by government. I mean, we have been there, done that. The
government state-owned monopoly is really is not going to work in the
future. These have to be competitive networks.

The most important thing that investors look for when they are looking
to invest is to limit their risk. That means they want to invest in
economies that have firmly embraced the rule of law, that have
transparency, predictability, an absence of corruption. I think we have
done a very good job in the United States in telecommunications, of
incorporating those things into our policies.

We have an obligation, we meaning those of us in the United States, in
the EU and the developing world generally, to impart this knowledge and
to help folks get on this Internet train.

So I am very pleased to be able to report on the successes of our
development initiative. We have now entered into work plans with three
countries in Africa: Uganda, Ghana and South Africa. We met extensively
with our counterparts there, identified those substantive areas where we
think that we can be of particular assistance; and we are putting our
money where our mouth is.

We at the FCC do not have a lot of money. We are not a foreign aid
organization, but we have a lot of knowledge and a lot of experience. We
can impart that in ways that not only help uplift people in Africa, in
the developing world, but also uplift us, and allow us to share our
experience and make sure that this infrastructure is truly global.

To close, I just want to again reiterate how privileged we all are to be
working in this field at this particular time. It is really a joy for me
as chairman of the FCC to be able to wake up almost every morning, open
the business pages and read about something that is happening in the
telecommunications industry. It is really a fascinating time, a
remarkable time to be alive.

And when I read these articles, I have to tell you, sometimes I am a
little frustrated because so much of the coverage of this information
age revolution is about money and about wealth. So much of the coverage
is about how many billions of dollars are involved in a merger, and who
is going to get rich, and so much of this new economy today is being
defined by its ability to create unbelievable wealth in the hands of a
privileged few people, really a few people relative to the rest of the
world. Many of them live within about a 10-mile radius of this
university.

But the point is that this new economy has got to be about more than
that. I has to be more than about creating wealth and creating business
empires because what is important about this technology is its ability
to connect people, to educate people, to make people healthier, and
really make them more productive and happy in their lives, and we have
an obligation to spread that word as well. That is what our developing
initiative is all about.

I am pleased that we have worked in such great partnership with George
Mason to make it happen, and we have a lot more work to do together.

Thank you all very much.