Policy for access: Framing the question

Abstract

Five years after the '96 Telecommunications Act, we still find precious little local facilities-based competition. In response there are calls in Congress and even from the FCC for new legislation to "free the Bells." However, the same ideology drove policy, not just five years ago, but also almost twenty years back with the first modern push for "freedom," namely divestiture. How might we frame the question of policy for local access to engender a more fruitful approach? The starting point for this analysis is the network--not bits and bytes, but the human network. With the human network as starting point, the unit of analysis is the community--specifically, the individual in a tension with community. There are two core ideas. The first takes a behavioral approach to the economics--and the relative share between beneficial chaos and order, in economic affairs, becomes explicit. If the first main idea provides a conceptual base for open source, the second core idea distinguishes open source from open design, ie at the information 'frontier' we push forward. The resulting policy frame for access is worked out in the detailed, concrete steps of an extended thought experiment. A small town setting (Concord, Massachusetts) grounds the discussion in the real world. The purpose overall is to stimulate new thinking which may break out of the conundrum where periodic rounds to legislate 'freedom' produce the opposite, recursively. The ultimate aim is better fit between our analytically-driven expectations and economic outcomes.