CHAIRMAN REED HUNDT
               FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION
                                
                 AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE
                        WASHINGTON, D.C.
                                
                        August 14, 1997
                                
                   (As Prepared for Delivery)
                                
        THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL VS. THE FOG: 
               DEREGULATION VS. THE LEGAL CULTURE

     A year-and-a-half after the President signed a law that
replaced a hundred years of monopoly in communications with a
commitment to competition, we should ask:  is it working? Will
Congress and the President see their intentions come true? Will we
get competition and deregulation in local telephone markets --
perhaps the largest remaining monopolized markets in our economy?

     The answer is we have scarcely any competition in the local
markets.  The pace of investment and new entry is too slow; the
success of our country's national deregulatory effort is
jeopardized by the delays, missteps, and complexities of our legal
culture.

     Today I hope to describe some of the problems that our legal
culture poses for rapid deregulation and some of the solutions that
are possible.

     As Jerry Mashaw of Yale Law School wrote in his brilliant book
analyzing the failures  of the 1966 Motor Vehicle Safety Act,
"[L]egal culture...[is] expressed through the operation of judicial
review, the separation of powers, 'federalism,' and associated
'checks and balances'."

     And this legal culture, he wrote, determines the "ultimate
success or failure" of any law that depends, as the Telcom Act
must, on agency implementation.

       As Mashaw explained, the Congressional intent behind the
unanimously voted Motor Vehicle Safety Act was hornswoggled by the
legal culture.  While the courts debated every nuance of every
phrase of the law and every jot and tittle of the expert agency's
implementation, for each of the first 15 years after the law was
passed about as many Americans were killed on the highways as died
in the entire Vietnam War.
     
     When it comes to legislation, between the thought and the deed
falls the shadow.
The shadow is cast by the million lawyers of America.  I praise,
respect, and try to convince other countries to adopt the American
system by rule of law.  

     But respecting the rule of law is different from admiring the
delays of the legal process.
The Telcom Act described a paradise of open markets, free
competition, deregulation and growth in the information sector that
is already one-sixth of our economy.

      In my mind's eye, I see Congress and the FCC together in that
paradise like Adam and Eve -- we being the agency created by
Congress like Eve from Adam's rib.  

     But now we two, like the First Family of Milton's Paradise
Lost, are being exiled "hand in hand, with wand'ring steps and
slow," from the Eden of promised deregulation into the harsh desert
of the legal culture -- with its thousand devices of tortuous delay
and tortured questioning of every phrase, word, and punctuation
mark of the Telcom Act.
     
     Professor Mashaw wrote that an agency must "understand how
hostile the legal culture can be toward certain forms of regulation
. . . ."  

     And I might add, how hostile the legal culture can be even
toward deregulation. 

     I admit that Congress asked us to undo the state-regulated
local monopolies by forceful rulemaking action, not by passivity or
mere jawboning.

     Hostility is a fair way to characterize the reaction -- from
the telephone industry, from some states and even from the alleged
new entrants, the long distance companies.  An example: we dared
order the long distance companies no longer to file tariffs with
us. If they weren't regulated they'd actually be exposed to
consumer lawsuits.  So they got a court to enjoin us from
deregulating!

     I understand that for incumbent monopolists and other
companies protected by regulation from market forces hostility may
be a rational response to deregulation. 

     The problem is that the legal culture -- just as Mashaw taught
--  validates that hostility, primarily by encouraging unceasing
argument and ineffective delay-ridden decisionmaking. 

     Debates of interminable Jesuitical casuistry rage over the
Congressional intent behind the word "cost" or  -- my personal
favorite -- the word "and", as in the phrase "business and
residential." 

      I admire the lawyerly zeal that sees complexity behind these
simple terms.   Of course, that's because I am one of them -- I
myself am a lawyer.  Worse, I'm a son of a lawyer. So I appreciate
lawyerly cunning that can fog the plainest Congressional intent.
     
     But how can we find our way to free markets through all this
lawyerly fog?
     
     Even now the telcos and the long distance companies and many
other parties, including often the states, appeal virtually every
paragraph of every one of our decisions to various courts of
appeals.  Moreover, the appellate courts don't consolidate the
appeals; they scatter them across the country.

     And as if there weren't enough litigation, Southwestern Bell
has hired a brilliant lawyer named Tribe to argue in federal court
in Wichita Falls that the Telcom Act the company itself lobbied
about for years is unconstitutional.

     I have two questions.  First, SBC has just discovered the
Telcom Act is unconstitutional?  They lobbied this law for a
decade.  A year-and-a-half after it was signed, they just found out
it violates the Constitution?

     Second, the Bells asked Congress for a date certain by which
they could get into long distance.  They wanted three years after
the law was signed:  that would be February 1999.  This lobbying
effort they actually lost.  And now they are irate to the point of
starting Tribal warfare because only half-way through their own
proposed waiting period they haven't yet made a record of opening
local markets that passes the tests of the law.  Is this
reasonable?

     The fog, the fog!

      Meanwhile, after getting the Eighth Circuit to enjoin our
clear national rule defining "cost" so that fair and final
interconnection agreements could be quickly reached, GTE's taste
for litigation is unslaked. So far, by our count, GTE has filed 23
federal court actions challenging the pricing decisions of 23 state
commissions.
     
     Of course, eventually the Supreme Court will resolve all
disputes and the path to competition will be clear.

     But the excruciating delays of the legal process recall the
lawsuit known as Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, described in Dickens' Bleak
House.  Let me read a bit from that great book, and ask you to
think of the interconnection lawsuit Dickens could so easily have
been describing: 

              This scarecrow of a suit has, in course of time,
              become so complicated that no man alive knows what
              it means.  The parties to it understand it least;
              but it has been observed that no two ... lawyers
              can talk about it for five minutes without coming
              to a total disagreement as to all the
              premises....The little plaintiff or defendant, who
              was promised a new rocking-horse when [the case]
              should be settled, has grown up, possessed himself
              of a real horse, and trotted away into the other
              world.
                   
            I myself perhaps can find that horse and ride away, the Senate
so permitting when it  returns in September. 
     
     And so will many, while the interconnection litigation drones
on.

     But there has to be a better fate for our country's
competition policy than Jarndyce v. Jarndyce.
     
     Dickens also wrote:  "Facts alone are wanted in life.  Plant
nothing else, and root out everything else."  

     So let me plant a handful of facts.



     Fact number one:  after years of effort by many states, such
as Ohio, Wisconsin, Illinois, Oregon and others -- there is still
scarcely any choice for telephone service in local markets.  A
year-and-a-half after the new telcom law,  the new entrants to the
local exchange markets of the U.S. have between one and two percent
of total market share.
     
     So far, scarcely any local competition has been delivered to
residential or business consumers.
     
     Fact number two:  if our local telephone companies thought
markets were truly open, at least one of them somewhere would be
going into its neighbors' markets.  For all intents and purposes,
none of them is doing so.
     
     And if local markets were truly open to competition, then all
Bell companies in those markets would long ago have filed 271
applications for entry into long distance.  Instead, only one Bell
in one state, Ameritech in Michigan, has even tried to make a
serious showing that one state is truly and fully open to
competition -- and there, neither Michigan nor the Department of
Justice yet agreed!

     By the absence of serious 271's and by the absence of telco-
to-telco competition, the local telephone industry in effect admits
that not one state market is truly open to competition at this
time.
     
     Fact number three:  the congressional intent to open local
markets on a national level has never, not for a day, been
completely put into action.  And that has mattered a great deal.

     Since the day the law was signed, the incumbents have been
arguing for prices so high that the new entrants would be, in
effect, paying off the incumbents' past investments.  If new
entrants are forced to do that, they won't have enough money to pay
for their own investments.  Result: poof! no competition.

     There has never been a day when any new entrant could be
assured that interconnection pricing and network sharing pricing
could be counted on to be, and to remain, fair in any state or
region of the country.  That means prices that are forward-looking
or, in other words, set by the formula called TELRIC  (total
element long run incremental cost).

     Yet, at last count, only 11 states have issued permanent
interconnection and element pricing rules.

     Meanwhile, does it matter that the Eighth Circuit last Fall
enjoined the FCC's fair prices from going into effect?  

     GTE told the Eighth Circuit last fall that if the FCC's
pricing rules went into effect, GTE would suffer "substantial and
rapid losses of market share." 

     In other words, they said the FCC pricing rule would cause
competition right away. They got an injunction from the Eighth
Circuit:  poof! the prospect for rapid competition went away. 

     The result:  the telcos have lost hardly any market share
since the law was passed.

     So the judicial intervention in the interconnection case hurt
competition badly. 

     Fact number four:  the existing competitive efforts in local
markets are tiny fish that will not survive in the presence of the 
incumbent, formerly government-protected monopolist, whale-sized
telcos -- unless state and national governments  write and enforce
pro-competitive rules.
     All evidence suggests that as of now there is not effective
enforcement of binding competition rules. And without that,
competition will be undercut.

     These are four key facts that tell us that we have a major
challenge to introduce competition in the local telephone markets.
And that challenge is not yet being met. Plainly investment in
local competition is a necessity.
     
     We need to promote investment by promoting rapid and wise
decisions about how to open local telephone markets.

      Justice delayed is investment denied.
     
     Now I get to my most comforting fact, number five: 
legislation is not like the Ten Commandments.

     The Commandments were brought down direct from the Supreme
Being. They were not subject to judicial review. The tribes of
Israel did not have divided jurisdiction over enforcing them.

     Legislation is not so fine a thing.  But legislation --- this
is its saving grace -- is the work of mere humans and so mere
humans can keep writing and rewriting it until courts finally
submit to its direction.
     
     So let us talk about how Congress could blow away the
paralyzing fog the legal culture is spreading  over the legislative
and executive mandate to open the local markets.

      Let us talk about how Congress, at least for this one fine
law, might make sure its intent is truly realized.

     I have four proposals for legislative action.

     A.  We need an immediate national definition of "cost" set
forth by the FCC, so this key term won't vary confusingly and
uncertainly from state to state.

     Until the Eighth Circuit interconnection decision, no court in
60 years has issued a decision constraining this agency from
defining terms in a congressional statute.
     


     There is no doubt, however, that in a national law using the
term 'cost' Congress intends a single national meaning for the
term.  The result of the Eighth Circuit decision is that up to 93
district courts will define the meaning of "cost" as they review
hundreds of interconnection agreements.  A dozen courts of appeal
will then review these decisions.  And if there is conflict among
circuits ultimately -- years from now -- the United States Supreme
Court will decide what "cost" means.

     What fog this process will spew forth!
     
     When Senators Lott, Hollings, Stevens and Inouye, and
Congressmen Bliley and Markey told the Eighth Circuit that the FCC
had the authority to define "cost," their words should have been
treated by the courts as law.  They were not.  Now the law should
be written to instruct the Court to follow the Senate Majority
Leader by permitting the FCC to define the term now and have its
definition respected by the courts, states, and parties.

     B.  The FCC should be given deference, as Supreme Court
authority requires, for any reasonable interpretation of
congressional intent and its application of policy.

     In the 1984 case of  Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense
Council, the Supreme Court said that where "Congress has not
directly addressed the precise question at issue, the [appellate]
court does not simply impose its own construction on the statute." 
Instead, the Court said, an appellate court must affirm if "the
agency's answer is based on a permissible construction of the
statute."  
     
     But in the Eighth Circuit case, the court of appeals
substituted its judgment for ours in striking down what it called
the "pick and choose" rule, which we call the "nondiscrimination"
rule.  
     The court of appeals "acknowledge[d] ... that the FCC's
approach [could reasonably be said to be] intended by Congress." 
[fn. 22]
     
     If that's so, then under Chevron  we should have been
affirmed.

     Instead, the Eighth Circuit inserted its opinion for ours
regarding how interconnection negotiations were likely to proceed,
and reversed the FCC.

     This decision is a recipe for delay, doubt, and uncertainty.

     If the FCC reasonably interprets the Telcom Act, the courts
should rapidly affirm, not deliberately secondguess.

     Congress should specifically instruct the 8th Circuit that our
interpretation of the statute on this subject was correct, and that
Chevron should be followed strictly by all courts reviewing our
decisions.

     If Congress does not like our interpretations, it can change
them.  But courts should give us Chevron deference.

     C.  Judicial review of FCC decisions interpreting and applying
the telcom act should not be piecemeal or delayed.

     I am confident that we ultimately will prevail in the Supreme
Court on the Eighth Circuit's decision concerning our
interconnection provisions.  But, similar litigation over the 1992
Cable Act just ended last month, after five years, and it might
have gone on for another year if the cable operators hadn't decided
to give up. 

     We need a faster, cheaper, way to get the legal issues of
competition policy resolved.

     I will propose that Congress consider passing laws that would
consolidate all appeals of section 252 agreements and all review of
FCC decisions in a single court, bar stays of our orders for more
than 30 days, and require for all such review expedited briefing
and decisionmaking.

     D.  No state or federal competition rule will be of value
unless it's enforceable.

     I applaud the new Illinois statute that requires resolution of
interconnection-related complaints within 60 days.

     I will propose to Congress that it impose a similar rule on
the FCC and on all states.  Those states that won't follow such a
rule, would have to relinquish enforcement to the FCC.  In
addition, I will ask Congress to increase the sanctions available
to the FCC.  We should have treble damage relief, in addition to
equitable remedies, for all violations of our rules.

     Congress, its agency the FCC, the Administration, and the
country want a private, investment-built information economy in
which the states and the federal government have no further need to
regulate investment, wholesale prices or retail prices.

     Lawyers -- including both judges and recovering litigators,
like me -- need to learn from business people the real world
consequences of delay and uncertainty.  

     While courts spar with Congress and its expert agency, while
NARUC sues the FCC and never ever files a brief in support of us,
the fog of uncertainty spreads like the famous fog of London
described by Dickens as a metaphor for Jarndyce v. Jarndyce.

     And in that fog an entrepreneur misses a window for launching
a new satellite venture. 

     A would-be new entrant watches an incumbent obtain first mover
advantage in offering a new product line.  A banker agrees to
finance an established business, while turning down the
entrepreneur on the ground that the competition rules aren't clear
yet.

     The result -- jobs are lost; money is wasted; choice does not
come to the market; consumers are disappointed; productivity gains
are not realized; other economies surge forward and we lose our
edge.

     These costs are real.  They must always to be in our minds as
we lawyers try to create a fair but efficient rule of law. 
     The competition policy of Congress should be realized by
businesspersons solving economic and technological policies.  It
should not be tangled up by lawyers solving -- or creating -- word
games about legislative intent. 

      Samuel Johnson said people disagree chiefly on means not
ends.  I'm sure we all agree on the ends of deregulation and
competition.  Let's work together in mutual respect to find more
effective means.

                             - FCC -