---------- Text of forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 1993 15:31:21 -800 (PST)
From: Washington State Lib <wutcpol1@wln.com>
Subject: Announcing WUTC docs at ftp site
*********************** Public Announcement *************************
Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission
1300 S. Evergreen Park Dr. S.W.
P.O. Box 47250
Olympia, WA 98504-7250
TO ALL INTERESTED PERSONS:
The Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission has
launched a public inquiry on how to regulate the
telecommunications industry during the transition to effective
competition. As part of this investigation, Commission staff has
prepared a discussion paper which explores developing trends in
communications technology and market structure and defines basic
policy objectives that a new telecommunications regulatory
structure should accomplish.
Traditionally, Commission inquiries have been open to the
public but have rarely gone beyond comment from the regulated
industries and their major customers. The discussion paper
contends that "in a converged marketplace, local telephone
service will inevitably become simply one component of a multi-
media service package." Thus, the Commission is actively seeking
a wider range of comment from existing and potential
communication network providers as well as informed consumers.
Since the scope of the communications industry has changed,
regulatory arrangements that have been structured around these
formally discrete markets must also change. The discussion paper
calls for a new regulatory paradigm -- eventually "shifting
attention away from corporate earnings and service pricing toward
fair interconnection, common carriage and consumer protection."
The discussion paper, "Alternative Regulation of U S West:
Toward a New Paradigm" eschews the current popular fascination
with specific technology deployments. Instead of defining an
outcome where customers pay for services they may not want, the
Commission's paper believes the state should foster a
communications marketplace where the customer has a wide array of
choices from competitive providers. Essentially, the message is
that the ultimate and only bottleneck should be the limitations
of the human mind.
However, in the short term, the Commission's investigation
seeks a new regulatory plan for the state's largest telephone
company U S West -- envisioning this new regulatory plan as a
major component to ensuring fair and effective competition.
First round of comments are due by January 31, 1994.
The Notice of Inquiry, with the associated discussion paper
on the Alternative Form of Regulation, is available via anonymous
FTP on the Internet. Connect to the host at:
FTP.GOVT.WASHINGTON.EDU,
cd to the directory: /wutc, then:
for the ascii text version, get
NOI_ON_THE_AFOR.txt
for a WordPerfect version, switch mode to Binary and get
NOI_ON_THE_AFOR.wp51
Hard copies can be acquired by sending a request with a postal
address to wutcpol1@wln.com. The Commission is requesting that
formal comment be submitted both in hard copy and on disk in
electronic form; and is requesting permission to post comments.
Please share this posting with others in your organization.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 03/09/00 PST