FCC Strays From Social Commitment

Distance and density count. They count because they have important political, social and economic consequences.

Consider, for example, people who plan, finance, regulate, manage or use large networks -- an Interstate highway system, an electric grid or a telecommunications network. They pay attention to density because the cost of building, maintaining and improving a network depends a lot on how many people can be served in an area -- the more, the cheaper. So, small areas with lots of people are very attractive to network people.

Now, what do we call small areas with lots of people? You guessed it: cities. What do we call large areas with a few people? You guessed it: the West -- especially the Rocky Mountain West.

Though differences between a big, densely populated metroplex or a small city or town are often at issue, Americans have, from the beginning, espoused public policies responsive to people in sparsely populated areas. Our national motto, after all, is E Pluribus Unum ("out of many, one"). Over the years, this concept was expanded from immigrants to embrace other segments of our population, and especially people who live in America's small towns and rural areas. From the Constitutional Convention, where the "great compromise" gave all states (big and small) equal representation in the U.S. Senate, to decisions for federal funding of the "National Road" (what later became old Route 40 and then Interstate 70), Americans had established the principle of shared social responsibility by the 18th century.

Then came the transcontinental railroad and the Homestead Act of the 19th century and the Tennessee Valley Authority, rural electrification, universal telephone service, regional development commissions for Appalachia, the Ozarks and other areas lacking infrastructure, and the Interstate highway program in this century. President Carter's White House Conference on Balanced Growth and Economic Development in 1978 formally recognized these historic public policy commitments -- namely, that it's in the national interest to mitigate regional economic imbalances, especially those affected by population density.

Those historic commitments are now being challenged by a big-business, big-city-oriented Federal Communications Commission chaired by Al Gore prot