 |
United States congressman Billy Tauzin
Laissez les bon temps rouler (let the good times roll) is a popular saying in New Orleans, also known as the Big Easy and the City that Care Forgot. Visitors from throughout the world have long enjoyed the great food, soulful music, and exciting nightlife that have made New Orleans famous.
But New Orleans is more than just a great place to "pass a good time." What better location for this year's International Conference on Communications -- "Global Convergence Through Communications" -- than this historic city which is an interesting blend of old-world French charm and modern-day technology?
And what better speaker to give the keynote address than Louisiana Congressman Billy Tauzin, born on the bayou in Chackbay, Louisiana, and chairman of the influential House Subcommittee on Telecommunications, Trade and Consumer Protection. His subcommittee has jurisdiction over such vitally important areas as the Internet and electronic commerce, and sets national policy for America's broadcasters, telephone companies, cable TV, and the emerging satellite industry.
Tauzin himself is an intriguing blend of charm and wit. As Media Week's Alicia Mundy recently wrote: "Tauzin's smile and good ole boy demeanor are political tools he uses as a front for what is one of the sharpest minds in Congress. That may be one reason why this quotable Republican has suddenly become one of the most powerful people involved with the telecommunications industry."
First elected to Congress 20 years ago, Tauzin was a key architect of the 1996 Telecommunications Act and has championed several other consumer-friendly bills pertaining to satellite TV and 911 emergency service. Tauzin has also led the fight to improve the television ratings system in America, giving parents more information to determine the appropriateness of television programming viewed by their children. In addition, he served as co-chair of Net Day, a nationwide voluntary initiative to hook up school and libraries to the Internet.
Events taking place in the United States Congress have a tremendous impact on telecommunications throughout the world. Tauzin's keen mind and his understanding of the technologies behind the industries over which his subcommittee has jurisdiction enable him to offer a unique perspective on the challenges and opportunities merging technologies provide regulators.
In a recent interview, Tauzin shared his thoughts on the future of telecommunications, the concept of global convergence, trends in the industry, regulatory challenges, and unique telecommunications applications.
Tauzin defines the future of telecommunications by three processes: the exploding nature of the Internet, the transition from voice to digital, and the demand for knowledge and information.
"If you combine the first two processes -- communications approaching incredibly high speeds in a digital age where all forms of communications merge in a single digital stream -- with an insatiable demand for knowledge and information, you can begin to understand how explosive and revolutionary change in communications is becoming," Tauzin said.
This high-speed, digital future will have a tremendous impact on the world as we know it today.
"Knowledge is power, and this new Information Age therefore gives a lot of power to the people. This concept becomes a reality, not only in our country but also across the world," Tauzin said. "I think the biggest social impact of the explosion of telecommunications technology -- and the convergence and integration of all systems into high-speed digital Internet systems -- is that people across the world can't be lied to anymore. They'll have the ability to find the truth, to grow in knowledge and to have power over their own lives.
"It means that tyrannies will have a harder time sustaining themselves; it means that closed societies will have a harder time maintaining the walls that formerly enclosed them; it means that there will be Berlin Walls falling all over the world. I think that is the first and most dramatic impact."
There will also be tremendous changes in business and the economy, which is becoming global in nature.
"This means that the smallest business in the smallest community in the world can become a global enterprise," he said. "It also means that the old national rules of organization and regulation of economies are going to be challenged. They're going to have to accommodate these new systems, and that is going to be revolutionary in itself."
The new Information Age will also have a tremendous impact on education.
"People will be empowered with incredible new tools to educate themselves and to enrich the lives of people who have never had these opportunities. People who have been stuck in cycles of poverty and a lack of education will now have new opportunities opening up to them," Tauzin commented. "What's neat about that aspect of communication is that it is a very synergistic kind of system. The more of these tools we use to educate, the more educated people will flow back into the system and enhance it."
Tauzin likes the "mutual enrichment" feature of the new age, which will also create tremendous changes in our personal and family lives.
"When the telegraph was created, people had the ability to interact with members of the same family located in different places – it was amazing," he said. "In fact, I believe Queen Victoria heard about her granddaughter by telegraph."
He referenced a book titled The Victorian Internet, which is all about the telegraph -- the first type of Internet system. The book posed a lot of the same questions about privacy, control, and security that are considered today with regard to the Internet.
"These systems have greatly enhanced the ability of families to function in an age when families don't necessarily live as close to each other as they used to," he said. "This is going to alleviate a lot of the problems created by a transient age and enable families to stay close, despite the great distances that separate them."
Of course, there will also be tremendous advances in the way the family home operates. Intelligent homes where all household systems can be controlled from a single location are now being designed.
"These homes will be able to intelligently operate while family members are away at work, on vacation, or attending a convention such as ICC 2000 in New Orleans," Tauzin mused. "Family life is going to be altered dramatically in terms of the way in which a household operates. In the end, the impact of the Information Age on families may be one of the most significant. There are a lot of other forces in our time tearing families up, and this is an opportunity to bring them back together."
When asked what global convergence means to him, Tauzin said he believes it speaks about the new age we are about to enter where being a "citizen of the world" has real meaning.
"People used to talk about being a citizen of the world as some sort of ideal, and now it is really possible," he said. "People can truly become citizens of a world that in many ways is much smaller and more closely in touch. I think the technological advances that are allowing the communications systems to bring people closer together are the blessings of the new age."
According to Tauzin, this concept also creates a larger question: how will the old structures that were designed to provide service and security, as well as to accommodate national economies and structures, operate in a world of converging and merging communications technologies and economies?
"When I think about global convergence, I see the irresistible movement of technology and I see the hard rocks of the old world regulatory structures and governing systems. And while those rocks have been pretty movable in the past, I don't think they're going to be that movable in the future," he said. "I believe this new irresistible force is going to roll over a lot of them."
ICC 2000 Local Arrangements Chairman Richard Miller (right) serves a famous Pat O'Brien's
hurricane to General Chairman Bill Oliver in the courtyard of the bar located in the French Quarter.
Tauzin said policy makers need to think about what it means to be regulated in a common market country when businesses are global and customers are as easily accessible in the Far East as they are in the countryside of France or Great Britain.
"What does it mean to be a company regulated by the Federal Communications Commission in the United States when your company is now providing service to citizens across the world? Those are going to be the toughest challenges," he said, "and I believe technology is racing forward a lot faster than government's ability to accommodate these old systems to the new world economy. That's going to be the big challenge."
Tauzin said another challenge will be providing products and services to people who were previously not aware of what was available.
"How do you deal with hundreds of millions of people suddenly wanting and demanding the things that have been available to other people in the world, once they learn about them through satellite television and the Internet? It's the same dynamic that brought the Berlin wall down," he said. "There's some incredible challenges out there."
Tauzin said one of the more dynamic trends he has witnessed in Europe and now in the United States is the growing interest in wireless services.
"We've always been 'wired up' -- since the telegraph. We wired up America with telephones and built a system around a concept called 'universal service' that touched everyone with a wire. But all of a sudden we became a mobile society and we're trying to make all our communications -- even the Internet -- wireless," he explained.
"We first saw it explode on the scene with cellular service and telephones as we began to merge the digital language of computers with telephone systems and created digital wireless services and personal communications systems. We've seen the emergence of new pager systems and palm pilots that allow us to communicate and even fax documents as we move around from one location to another. The next generation will be total Internet and real-time video on mobile products that will keep us in touch every minute of the day -- no matter where we are."
Tauzin said those trends are accelerating as the computer industry in Silicon Valley and other centers around the country -- and the world -- move rapidly to develop those products.
"I see communications carriers building their wireless systems as an extension of the old structure that served us so well for so many years, and I see laboratories working on new wireless telecommunications technologies such as modulated pulse technology," he said. "I think those trends are going to accelerate, and I think we're going to see more and more effort to bring wireless Internet communications to everyone on the planet."
Another fascinating trend is the development of voice-activated systems.
"When you think about it, the 'mouse' was an incredible invention that made the computer suddenly usable to many folks -- like myself -- who never would have gone to school to learn computer language," he said. "It also made the Internet accessible.
Visitors to New Orleans can take a ride on the
steamboat Natchez for a spectacular
view of the city
and the riverfront from the Mississippi River.
"Just as the mouse became an incredibly user-friendly device in the introduction of the computer age and the Internet to millions of people around the world, I believe voice- activated systems are going to become the next user-friendly system both for mobile and stationary devices. I believe the ability to interact with the Internet while you're driving in the car, or while you're at your desk -- or even while you're in a duck blind -- is going to immensely accelerate the usability of these systems for people."
One of the biggest challenges facing the industry, Tauzin said, is determining how to make all these systems work together and how to make them interoperable. There are several different standards for cellular telephones in the United States, and the interoperability of these systems is a real concern as they become part of the Internet digital world.
Another concern is how to shed the legacy of deep regulation and government involvement in telecommunications systems as America moves rapidly to accommodate the wireless developments that are taking place all over the world.
"We have more regulation on telephones than we do on trucking, and talking is supposed to be a free-speech, protected commodity in this country," Tauzin stated emphatically. "This legacy of regulation is like a rock around our necks, and we've got to learn to toss it off -- and it's not going to be easy."
An obvious trend has been the migration of network traffic from voice to data.
"The good news here is that everyone recognized fairly early that we had to move to the language of the computer if we were going to keep up with the technology of the new age. That is the reason why, for example, Congress provided the broadcasters of America spectrum to make the transition from analog TV to digital TV, recognizing that video was going to be a part of the new age.
"The fact that we're beginning to see new products coming out such as Web TV and settop boxes that allow analog television sets to become new modems for Internet service is a good sign," he said.
The insatiable demand for bandwidth is also a sign of the times.
"There is an exponential growth in Internet companies and service providers as well as information gatherers, Web sites, and information packaged for the Internet," Tauzin said. "Who can imagine where this will lead, and if you can't put a number on demand and on this incredible explosion in the supply of information, how can you possibly put a number on broadband availability needs?
"All we know is that as fast as people can build it, people are using it, and companies that are out there building it are incredibly successful. Global Crossing, for example, has become bigger than General Motors in just three years by laying fiber to connect the continents. It's amazing."
A critical challenge facing regulators is the security of content in a digital age.
"Once a content product becomes a digital product, it can be copied a number of times unless it is somehow protected," Tauzin explained. "And how do you protect digital content in an age when a couple of kids can break the best codes anyone can come up with in a couple of hours? How are these systems going to work if you can't provide security for content on the Internet?"
Tauzin cited an example from the movie industry, which is currently in court with a group that has begun broadcasting American television programs over the Internet.
"If American television programming is made available over the Internet today without some sort of licensing or copyright protection, local TV stations would fold. So how do you protect content, and if you can't, how are you going to encourage localism in these systems --– they will all become national or even global," he said.
"Simultaneously, a technological challenge that is also becoming a policy challenge is rationalizing privacy requirements in an Information Age. If we do develop high security systems that can protect content, aren't consumers going to use that to protect information? And if they protect information to too large an extent, will the Information Age dry up? If consumers who are sensitive about people gathering information about them have the capability to shut those systems down, how does that impact the Information Age and the new economy we've seen developing?"
Tauzin said these concerns must be balanced with the consumer's right to protect certain personal information such as health records, financial records and even reading habits.
"The challenge for technicians is not only to develop the kind of technology that protects content in a digital age, but also to develop technology that will protect privacy rights without shutting down an information system," he said. "These are tough challenges."
Another example Tauzin cited from the Hollywood industry is the formation of a copyright assembly designed to develop the technologies and policies that will protect their copyrighted content material. However, the same industry packages and sells its content around advertising. In order to effectively target their advertising, the content providers must know as much as they can about their audiences.
"As a result, an interesting situation has occurred -- the Hollywood industry is investing money in technologies that its audience can use against it to deny it the information it needs to properly advertise," Tauzin said.
"Here's another example. Most software manufacturers have embedded in their software a 'cookie' that allows people to track your movements on the Internet. Of course, I think that if most consumers knew software companies embedded a cookie without their permission, they'd be a little offended.
"At the same time, if your only defense is to disable that cookie, then you have cut yourself off from advertisers who may want to bring information to you about a lot of good products that you and your family might want," he continued.
"In that example, you can see the huge implication of these policy questions. Shouldn't consumers have the right to disable part of that cookie, and yet maintain the rest? Shouldn't I be allowed to say you can't track my movements when I'm moving around health-related Internet sites, for example?
"Consumers should be able to protect their financial records and their credit card numbers -- and even the video sites they visit or the types of books they buy. But maybe I do want you to know that I like to garden, or that I have pets, or that I would like information on special airline rates. There are all sorts of things I probably would like you to know about me, so you'll be better able to serve my needs.
"At the same time, I should have the right to draw those lines somewhere. But if every consumer can draw that line differently, how complex of a system have we built? Can we still move around in it? There are a lot of unanswered questions," he said.
Tauzin said the most unique telecommunications applications he has seen are the new pulse technologies.
"The reason they're the most intriguing to me is that they potentially solve many of the 'last mile' problems that all of the systems are encountering. How do you get fiber into the home when the home doesn't have fiber to it? How do you get into the multidwelling units where 35 percent of our people live and work when you're wired up for a single system?
"The neat aspect about the new pulse technologies is that they can potentially supply that last mile of connectivity. They can potentially deliver services competitively through brick and mortar without the necessity of tearing up buildings and rewiring them with competitive wiring systems. They also potentially offer ultimate security in communications," he marveled.
There are numerous other applications that boggle the mind, he said, including mobile video wrist watches, wireless Internet products and incredibly enhanced radar capabilities for airport and military applications.
"Another unique application is the possibility of delivering broadband around the electric cable inside an external electrical field. I find that intriguing because of the ubiquity of the electric utility systems in America; more people probably have electrical lines going into their homes than telephone lines.
"To think that every outlet in your home could be an outlet for full digital service for video, voice, the power to light your TV and provide it with information -- all at the same time -- that's pretty exciting and remarkable.
"The list goes on and on," Tauzin said. "It's a whole new world of communications services, and that presents both solutions and challenges in all sorts of new ways."
International Conference on Communications |
 Board a streetcar to view the beautiful homes in the historic Garden District on St. Charles Avenue. |