FCC chair sees low-cost telephone access as a beginning, not an end

By Randy Lilleston/CNN

April 18, 2000
Web posted at: 6:02 p.m. EDT (2202 GMT)

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE (CNN) -- To Federal Communications Commission Chairman William Kennard, giving low-cost telephone access to those who cannot otherwise afford it is not a solution to a problem, but a gateway to something much larger.

"As people get access to technology, it fundamentally changes their potential in our society, and we can't move into this new century with some people having access and others not having access," Kennard said Tuesday in an interview with allpolitics.com aboard Air Force One. Kennard was traveling Tuesday with President Bill Clinton as part of the president's two-day swing to spotlight the differences between groups who have ready technology access and those who do not.

Monday, at a Navajo reservation in New Mexico, the president announced he would make additional funds available to expand a federal program that provides low-cost telephone service to lower-income Americans. The program would make telephone service available on Native American reservations for as little as $1 per month.

Telephone service is nearly nonexistent on some Native American reservations, with less than 30 percent of homes on some reservations possessing telephones. Kennard sees a cascading effect from such a program: Provide a telephone line, and the Internet becomes available. Provide the Internet, and technology becomes available. Provide technology, and the economy improves. Improve the economy, and chronically poor areas begin to climb out of a longstanding and frustrating cycle.

"The challenge of bringing phone service to remote areas is that it's very expensive to lay a line," Kennard said. "You have widely dispersed populations and you have poor people, so we're also looking to create incentives for wireless technologies to serve these areas."

There are several subsidy programs already available to traditional telephone companies -- including the one spotlighted by Clinton on Monday. Kennard wants to see those subsidies liberalized.

"If a wireless company or a satellite company can provide service in the most cost-effective way, then they should be able to participate in the subsidy program," he said.

But that might face some congressional opponents, who are likely to raise concerns about the cost. But Kennard said the expanded access would benefit everyone, not just lower-income groups in isolated areas.

"Whenever you're building a network to connect the country, whether it's telephones or railroads or interstate highways, people in urban areas pay more, in effect, in order to make sure that the network reaches all parts of the country," said Kennard. "But that reinvestment in the network makes it more valuable, because if you live in Washington, D.C. or New York, but you have relatives in Wyoming and Montana, you can call them."

Kennard admits a key concern of the FCC is the simple ability to keep up with ever-changing technology. For example, even as phone lines are dropped into Navajo homes in New Mexico, other homes are being wired for broadband Internet access -- which vastly improves their ability to use more complex technologies.

The key for the FCC is to be flexible, Kennard said. "We no longer have the luxury of time to sit down and write rules for every conceivable issue that arises in this new economy, so instead, we've adopted novel ways of addressing change.

"For example, we're doing more through enforcement, where we can move more quickly. We're doing more through facilitating industry dialogues and guidelines, as opposed to writing rules and going through the rule-making and court process."

He added, "In some areas, we are getting out of the way. Where there's competition, we do get out of the way."

In the next few years, people in underserved areas should "have the same high-quality telecommunications service that anyone has in suburban America," Kennard said. "That means high-speed access to the Internet and comprehensive wireless service -- paging, phones -- and that's possible. This can be done if we muster the political will to make it happen."

"Once the technology is there, you can build on it," he added. "Businesses can then hook into those networks, community centers can hook into those networks, and that can be a catalyst."