Gore GII Buenos Aires Speech

[David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

                Remarks prepared for delivery


                             By


                   Vice President AL GORE


            International Telecommunications Union


                    Monday March 21, 1994








I have come here, 8,000 kilometers from my home, to ask you to help
create a Global Information Infrastructure.  To explain why, I want to
begin by reading you something that I first read in high school, 30
years ago.


"By means of electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve,
vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time. . . . The
round globe is a vast . . . brain, instinct with intelligence!"


This was not the observation of a physicist -- or a neurologist.
Instead, these visionary words were written in 1851 by Nathaniel
Hawthorne, one of my country's greatest writers, who was inspired by
the development of the telegraph.  Much as Jules Verne foresaw
submarines and moon landings, Hawthorne foresaw what we are now poised
to bring into being.


The ITU was created only 14 years later, in major part for the purpose
of fostering an internationally compatible system of telegraphy.


For almost 150 years, people have aspired to fulfill Hawthorne's
vision--to wrap nerves of communications around the globe, linking all
human knowledge.


In this decade, at this conference, we now have at hand the
technological breakthroughs and economic means to bring all the
communities of the world together.  We now can at last create a
planetary information network that transmits messages and images with
the speed of light from the largest city to the smallest village on
every continent.


I am very proud to have the opportunity to address the first
development conference of the ITU because the President of the United
States and I believe that an essential prerequisite to sustainable
development, for all members of the human family, is the creation of
this network of networks.  To accomplish this purpose, legislators,
regulators, and businesspeople must do this:  build and operate a
Global Information Infrastructure.  This GII will circle the globe with
information superhighways on which all people can travel.


These highways--or, more accurately, networks of distributed
intelligence--will allow us to share information, to connect, and to
communicate as a global community.  From these connections we will
derive robust and sustainable economic progress, strong democracies,
better solutions to global and local environmental challenges, improved
health care, and--ultimately--a greater sense of shared stewardship of
our small planet.


The Global Information Infrastructure will help educate our children
and allow us to exchange ideas in within a community and among
nations.  It will be a means by which families and friends will
transcend the barriers of time and distance.  It will make possible a
global information marketplace, where consumers can buy or sell
products.  I ask you, the delegates to this conference, to set an
ambitious agenda that will help all governments, in their own sovereign
nations and in international cooperation, to build this Global
Information Infrastructure.  For my country's part, I pledge our
vigorous, continued participation in achieving this goal--in the
development sector of the ITU, in other sectors and in plenipotentiary
gatherings of the ITU, and in bilateral discussions held by our
Departments of State and Commerce and our Federal Communications
Commission.


The development of the GII must be a cooperative effort among
governments and peoples.  It cannot be dictated or built by a single
country.  It must be a democratic effort.


And the distributed intelligence of the GII will spread participatory
democracy.


To illustrate why, I'd like to use an example from computer science.
In the past, all computers were huge mainframes with a single
processing unit, solving problems in sequence, one by one, each bit of
information sent back and forth between the CPU and the vast field of
memory surrounding it.  Now, we have massively parallel computers with
hundreds -- or thousands --- of tiny self- contained processors
distributed throughout the memory field, all interconnected, and
together far more powerful and more versatile than even the most
sophisticated single processor, because they each solve a tiny piece of
the problem simultaneously and when all the pieces are assembled, the
problem is solved.


Similarly, the GII will be an assemblage of local, national, and
regional networks, that are not only like parallel computers but in
their most advanced state will in fact be a distributed, parallel
computer.


In a sense, the GII will be a metaphor for democracy itself.
Representative democracy does not work with an all-powerful central
government, arrogating all decisions to itself.  That is why communism
collapsed.


Instead, representative democracy relies on the assumption that the
best way for a nation to make its political decisions is for each
citizen -- the human equivalent of the self-contained processor -- to
have the power to control his or her own life.


To do that, people must have available the information they need.  And
be allowed to express their conclusions in free speech and in votes
that are combined with those of millions of others.  That's what guides
the system as a whole.


The GII will not only be a metaphor for a functioning democracy, it
will in fact promote the functioning of democracy by greatly enhancing
the participation of citizens in decision-making.  And it will greatly
promote the ability of nations to cooperate with each other.  I see an
new Athenian Age of democracy forged in the fora the GII will create.


The GII will be the key to economic growth for national and
international economies.  For us in the United States, the information
infrastructure already is to the U.S. economy of the 1990s what
transport infrastructure was to the economy of the mid-20th century.
The integration of computing and information networks into the economy
makes U.S. manufacturing companies more productive, more competitive,
and more adaptive to changing conditions and it will do the same for
the economies of other nations.


These same technologies are also enabling the service sectors of the
U.S.  economy to grow, to increase their scale and productivity and
expand their range of product offerings and ability to respond to
customer demands.


Approximately 60% of all U.S. workers are "knowledge workers" -- people
whose jobs depend on the information they generate and receive over our
information infrastructure.  As we create new jobs, 8 out of 10 are in
information-intensive sectors of our economy.  And these new jobs are
well-paying jobs for financial analysts, computer programmers, and
other educated workers.


The global economy also will be driven by the growth of the Information
Age.  Hundreds of billions of dollars can be added to world growth if
we commit to the GII.  I fervently hope this conference will take full
advantage of this potential for economic growth, and not deny any
country or community its right to participate in this growth.


As the GII spreads, more and more people realize that information is a
treasure that must be shared to be valuable.  When two people
communicate, they each can be enriched--and unlike traditional
resources, the more you share, the more you have.  As Thomas Jefferson
said, "He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself
without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives
light without darkening me."


Now we all realize that, even as we meet here, the Global Information
Infrastructure is being built, although many countries have yet to see
any benefits.


Digital telecommunications technology, fiber optics, and new
high-capacity satellite systems are transforming telecommunications.
And all over the world, under the seas and along the roads, pipelines,
and railroads, companies are laying fiber optic cable that carries
thousands of telephone calls per second over a single strand of glass.


These developments are greatly reducing the cost of building the GII.
In the past, it could take years to build a network.  Linking a single
country's major cities might require laying thousands of kilometers of
expensive wires.  Today, a single satellite and a few dozen ground
stations can be installed in a few months -- at much lower cost.


The economics of networks have changed so radically that the operation
of a competitive, private market can build much of the GII.  This is
dependent, however, upon sensible regulation.


Within the national boundaries of the U.S. we aspire to build our
information highways according to a set of principles that I outlined
in January in California.  The National Information Infrastructure, as
we call it, will be built and maintained by the private sector.  It
will consist of hundreds of different networks, run by different
companies and using different technologies, all connected together in a
giant "network of networks," providing telephone and interactive
digital video to almost every American.


Our plan is based on five principles: First, encourage private
investment; Second, promote competition; Third, create a flexible
regulatory framework that can keep pace with rapid technological and
market changes; Fourth, provide open access to the network for all
information providers; and Fifth, ensure universal service.


Are these principles unique to the United States?  Hardly.  Many are
accepted international principles endorsed by many of you.  I believe
these principles can inform and aid the development of the Global
Information Infrastructure and urge this Conference to incorporate
them, as appropriate, into the Buenos Aires Declaration, which will be
drafted this week.


Let me elaborate briefly on these principles.


First, we propose that private investment and competition be the
foundation for development of the GII.   In the U.S., we are in the
process of opening our communications markets to all domestic private
participants.


In recent years, many countries, particularly here in Latin America,
have opted to privatize their state-owned telephone companies in order
to obtain the benefits and incentives that drive competitive private
enterprises, including innovation, increased investment, efficiency and
responsiveness to market needs.


Adopting policies that allow increased private sector participation in
the telecommunications sector has provided an enormous spur to
telecommunications development in dozens of countries, including
Argentina, Venezuela, Chile, and Mexico.  I urge you to follow their
lead.


But privatization is not enough.  Competition is needed as well.  In
the past, it did make sense to have telecommunications monopolies.


In many cases, the technology and the economies of scale meant it was
inefficient to build more than one network.  In other cases--Finland,
Canada, and the U.S., for example--national networks were built in the
early part of this century by hundreds of small, independent phone
companies and cooperatives.


Today, there are many more technology options than in the past and it
is not only possible, but desirable, to have different companies
running competing--but interconnected--networks, because competition is
the best way to make the telecommunications sector more efficient, more
innovative--and more profitable as consumers make more calls and prices
decline.


That is why allowing other companies to compete with AT&T, once the
world's largest telephone monopoly, was so useful for the United
States.  Over the last ten years, it has cut the cost of a
long-distance telephone call in the U.S. more than 50%.


To promote competition and investment in global telecommunications, we
need to adopt cost-based collection and accounting rates.  Doing so
will accelerate development of the GII.


International standards to ensure interconnection and interoperability
are needed as well.  National networks must connect effectively with
each other to make real the simple vision of linking schools,
hospitals, businesses, and homes to a Global Information
Infrastructure.


Hand in hand with the need for private investment and competition is
the necessity of appropriate and flexible regulations developed by an
authoritative regulatory body.


In order for the private sector to invest and for initiatives opening a
market to competition to be successful, it is necessary to create a
regulatory environment that fosters and protects competition and
private sector investments, while at the same time protecting
consumers' interests.


Without the protection of an independent regulator, a potential private
investor would be hesitant to provide service in competition with the
incumbent provider for fear that the incumbent's market power would not
be adequately controlled.