Remarks by 
                          Chairman Reed E. Hundt
                     Federal Communications Commission
                  Before the American Chamber of Commerce
                              Moscow, Russia
                               July 20, 1994


It's a great pleasure for me to be here and I am very honored by your presence.  Anton
Chekov wrote, brevity is the sister of talent.  I suppose that means that if, like me, you lack
artistic talent, then you can go on at great length.  Nevertheless, in the words of Henry VIII,
I'll take questions.

As Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, I think I have the best job in
Washington you don't have to get elected to.  There are many enjoyable and challenging
aspects to my job.  The most exciting part of the job is that I am one of those involved in
setting government policy to promote the information communications revolution -- or what
we call the building of the national information highway.  My purpose here in Moscow is to
talk about the idea of this highway and to seek Russia's help in refining and extending this
idea around the world.

This information highway is a complex, multi-billion dollar assemblage of computer hardware
and software; fiber, copper and coaxial cables, and wireless transmissions.  It is the inevitable
evolution of the separate services of broadcast TV, wire-based and wireless telephones, cable
networks, and satellite systems.  It is the conversion of our means of communication from
analog to digital -- as a lawyer, I do not understand much about this digital technology but, in
the way of lawyers, I'm prepared to talk about it at great length.

But beyond the fascinating scientific breakthroughs, the information highway is profoundly
changing America in two major respects: its impact on our work force and on our democracy.

As to the first, in the United States the building of the national information highway is one of
the most important developments in the economic history of our country.  Modern
communication is linking computers, creating, through a kind of unplanned parallel
processing, a vast network of distributed intelligence.  Because of communications, our
businesses are becoming smarter and better -- that means they are becoming more productive.

President Clinton ran for his high office with the stated purpose of addressing the biggest
problem plaguing our economy during the previous two decades.  From the beginning of the
1970s to the beginning of the 1990s real wages for Americans steadily declined.  If
continued, this trend would have meant the end of the American Dream of leaving the world
a better place for your children than it was for their parents.

Now we are in the process of turning around this long decline.  The first step has comprised
the President's various measures to control inflation and reduce the deficit, starting with his
breakthrough budget of 1993 and continuing with, for example, the current attempt to
constrain the exploding costs of health care.
                
A second step now has been the great increase in productivity that is very largely attributable
to modern communications.  Every manufacturer, every service company in the United States
is now reinventing the way it does business so as to become more efficient, more productive
through the use of modern communications technology.  Just to give you an example, the
president of Intel, one of the leaders in the computer chip business, said recently that there
are only two kinds of companies in the United States: those that use electronic mail to
communicate and those that should.

In 1994, businesses in the United States maintained some 28 million electronic mailboxes. 
Just within the Hewlett-Packard company, for example, 97,000 employees exchange 20
million e-mail messages every month.  I'm proud to say that we do have e-mail at the FCC --
although I will admit that we only got it recently because of our extreme budget constraints in
the last few years -- and that it has so quickly become part of our corporate culture that we
send 50,000 messages a day just within the agency.

The increase in productivity is coupled with our defeat of excessive inflation.  As a result of
these two events, we shall see in the fullness of time, after two long decades, an increase in
real wages for American workers.  We call the new high-wage, high productivity work force   
"knowledge workers" to signify that they are the beneficiaries and the masters of the
communications revolution.  More than 80 percent of the new jobs currently created by our
economy are knowledge worker jobs.  I refer to sales clerks and schoolteachers, graphics
designers and newspaper reporters sheet metal workers and machine toolmakers -- all do their
job better by using a wealth of information; information about inventory, customer demand,
new techniques -- we are discovering daily the new uses of information to improve
performance.

The second long term significance of the information highway that it is changing the way
Americans relate to each other.  Russians in this group will recognize the similarities between
our countries when I quote our great historian Daniel Boorstin who wrote "America grew in
search of community."  The roughly 100 ethnic groups in sunny but troubled Los Angeles are
seeking community.  The African Americans who do not fully participate in our economy are
seeking community.  The millions of Americans who every year switch jobs, and move to
new towns, are seeking community.

Community must come from family, from schools from a commitment to law, and from a
sharing of culture.  But in a complex, multi-ethnic, change driven society community depends
fundamentally on communications.  Whether the subject is politics or the World Cup, the rule
of law or the top ten Letterman jokes, we need to communicate to build a shared community.

Russians all know that for many centuries in this great country's long history, the spirit of
liberalism and the dreams of individual freedom were nurtured chiefly by the great
communicators of what is now called the Gutenberg age.  I refer to the great writers of
Russia -- particularly to the immortal Alexander Pushkin.  Pushkin the artist is identified with
Russian history, and was for many decades under Czars the primary way to discuss the ideas
of liberty.

Pushkin died, as every Russian and some Americans know, in 1837, in a duel fought a month
after the publication of the third edition of his great poem Eugene Onegin. As he himself
prophetically wrote, "Blessed are those who life's banquet early left, having not drained to the
bottom the goblet full of wine."

At approximately the same time on our continent Samuel Morse was inventing the telegraph. 
This is one of those coincidences of history that seems in retrospect to form a pattern.  The
telegraph initiated the communication revolution that is now reaching its full crest.  And that
communications revolution is now everywhere, making individual freedom and self expression
inalienable rights not deniable by government.  This was Pushkin's dream.

The many coincidences and parallels between the United States Russia find perhaps their
most magical incarnation in the life and work of the person who is perhaps the greatest writer
of both Russia and the United States in this century:  Vladimir Nabokov.

Nabokov's grandfather was intimately involved in the reforms of the early 1860s when russia
ended serfdom coincidentally at the same time that Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves in the
United States.  Nabokov's father was Minister of Justice at the turn of the century and a
valiant fighter for individual rights.

Nabokov himself expressed the possibilities of freedom of imagination in all his writings --
first in Russian while he lived in the emigre community in Berlin, and then, when forced to
leave Europe because of Hitler, he astonishingly continued his writing in English.

The single English work on which he spent the most effort was his magnificent translation of
Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin."  In this book, and many others, such as Pnin and Ada, Nabokov
seemed to represent a fusion of our two great countries and cultures.

It is the pursuit of that fusion of our two countries -- each in search of community, each
prizing the imaginative spirit and the ideal of freedom -- that has brought me to Russia.  I can
hardly add to the artistic achievement of either country, but I do want to raise the possibility
of a new age of expression within and between our countries through modern communication. 
This possibility is concretely embodied in the Global Information Infrastructure initiative.

Nabokov wrote for himself and for the ages.  The rest of us have the less celebrated but still
important challenge of communicating for the benefit of each other.  We must talk to each
other to do business with each other.  We must  talk to create a spirit of community in our
own countries and between our counties.

This talking to each other -- this communication -- can mature into a great dialogue between
our countries' people.  The most important initial step is to take advantage of the fact that the
communications revolution means in practical terms better, cheaper, easier ways to
communicate.  The cost of installing cellular telephone system is far less than the cost of
building wireline networks.  And the costs of the next generation of wireless telephone --
personal communications service, or PCS -- are even lower.

In the United States, we are jump starting PCS by an auction of the public spectrum later this
year.  Only 10 years ago we at the FCC were told that mobile telephone service might draw
900,000 subscribers by the end of the century.  Estimates now are that there will be more
than 70 million subscribers to mobile telephone service by the time the 21st century begins.

These kinds of growth figures are possible here in Russia.  Russians are a marvelously well-
educated people in a land of great natural resources.  The communications revolution  -- the
most peaceful, productive, and pleasant of revolutions -- is beckoning.

Now when every nation is building its information highway it is best for all governments to
make sure that the highways are linked.  That's the ultimate purpose of the global information
initiative called for by Vice President Al Gore in the first World Development Conference of
the International Telecommunications Union in Buenos Aires last March.  I was there with
him, and I know how strongly the Russian delegation supported his initiative.

Now I'm here this week, with Vonya McCann, the State Department's U.S. Coordinator for
International Communications and Information Policy, and Assistant Secretary of Commerce
Larry Irving, in the hope of signing a Memorandum of Understanding with the Russian
Minister of Communications Vladimir Bulgak that adheres to the five principles the Vice
President called on all countries to adopt:

     - a commitment to rely on the pirate sector for communications infrastructure
     development;
     - no bars to competition in communications markets;
     - independent but flexible regulatory agencies;
     - open access to each national network; and
     - reliance on all communications providers to fulfill the commitment to universal
     service.
           
The insight shared by the United States and Russia is that the rule of law, consistent with
these five principles, is necessary to ensure that the communications revolution washes
peacefully and successfully over our economies and our societies.

Minister Bulgak correctly said in a speech in St. Petersburg in April 1993 that an "adequate
level of development of telecommunications creates the preconditions for growth of the gross
national product...."  Already Russia has much in place; indeed, President Yeltsin has written
in his recent book "Struggle for Russia" that in October 1993 the most ubiquitous of the
communications media, TV, saved Russia.  As he wrote, "politicians, artists businessmen,
writers, and everyone who valued their country managed to find out where Channel 2 was
broadcasting from and went to the studio to appeal to the Russian audience to stand up in
defense of democracy and freedom.

The TV heroes were "politicians, artists, businessmen and writers."  This is the characteristic
Russian blend of champions of self-expression and freedom that traces its roots back to
Pushkin -- although perhaps "businessmen" is a modern addition.

In the future, the voices of freedom can use all the avenue of modern communication,
including television and all the other lanes of the information highway -- satellites, wire and
wireless telephones, and coaxial cable.  And all this communication can ensure that not only
Russia but all the other nations of the world will find their way to a new binding, durable
sense of community.  The means will be a great conversation among and between the people
of the world.

We will discuss many things including, I hope, our mutual accomplishments.  In this respect
we should note that today is the 25th anniversary of the day the first man stepped on the
moon.  Neil Armstrong happened to be an American, but the "great leap of mankind" was
accomplished because of a decade-long competitive race between the United States and
Russia -- a race in which both countries suffered tragedies, produced heroes, and spurred each
other on.  We have so many accomplishments to strive for in the future through both
cooperation and productive, peaceful competition.

One of the most important accomplishments would be a mutual commitment to the concrete
realization of the regulatory regime called for in the Buenos Aires Declaration.  The United
States certainly must reform its rules and regulations to achieve fully open markets, and
perhaps my Russian friends would make the same admission.  Open communications markets
for free people must be our goal.  

When Vladimir Nabokov was teaching Russian literature at Cornell University, he called
America a "wise and quiet country."  My country is not as wise as it could be or as quiet as
it should be.  but the goal of quiet wisdom is a good one.  It is very similar, I might point
out, to what President Yeltsin wrote at the end of his book: "the chief goal of this restless
President is Russia's tranquility."  Communication is essential to realizing these goals.  Our
writer, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Pushkin's contemporary, predicted that the invention of the
telegraph would lead to a great nerve of intelligence that would wrap around the whole world.

By pursuing the Global Information Infrastructure initiative called for in the Buenos Aires
Declaration, we will be fulfilling that prediction.  And we will be building a bridge to
tranquility within and between our two countries.  In another of those coincidences that
suggest a pattern, Neil Armstrong's landing site on the moon was "Tranquility Base."  The
goal of tranquility is now not a moon shot away -- it is as close as modern communications
can bring us.  And I think you all know that with modern communication you can just "reach
out and touch someone."