Effective broadband policy could fuel economic recovery, according to SBC's Whitacre - Market Intelligence - Brief Article

ISP Business, Jan, 2002

The telecommunications industry can pull the US economy out of the doldrums by creating jobs and generating billions of dollars in growth annually if policymakers develop a "coherent, symmetrical national policy on broadband," according to Edward E. Whitacre Jr., chairman and CEO of San Antonio-based RBOC SBC Communications Inc.

"America cannot lead the world in growth if we don't act soon to remove the narrow-band governor on our economy," Whitacre told federal and state regulators and industry leaders at the Emerging Issues Policy Forum in Florida, recently.

Whitacre said less than 10 percent of Americans currently have broadband service. One reason for the slow pace of broadband deployment, Whitacre said, is that only one of the competing broadband technologies--telephone company-provided DSL--is regulated. In contrast, cable providers operate unburdened by regulation, he said.

Whitacre said the current asymmetrical regulatory environment gave all competitors, except for the telephone companies, "free rein to operate without concern for the added cost and delay that regulation inevitably brings."

That situation, he said, is bad news for consumers, who "deserve a full range of broadband choices." Whitacre said that by failing to correct the policy imbalance, "policymakers have put themselves in a tough spot." Policymakers may not be perceived as having picked the winner in the broadband race, but they could be viewed as having settled on a loser, he said.

"For us to seize the opportunity to keep American consumers at the vanguard of the broadband revolution, policymakers must seize this moment and let the free market work freely," Whitacre said. "The only threat is in not taking action. A patchwork quilt of regulations that apply to only one competitor-the one that's a distant second to the market leader-will not produce the results this nation needs."