January 2004 is the 20th Anniversary of the Divestiture Order in January 1984 that broke up AT&T into many competing companies. The question today is what the future of communications will look like -- and whether the nation which was well served by breaking up a huge monopoly twenty years ago is still facing serious competition problems in the telecommunications/IT policy arena.

The FCC will decide soon whether to grant broadcasters "must-carry" rights on cable systems for the five or more channels of digital programming they will soon be able to transmit over the air. Rights to such cable carriage are worth tens of billions of dollars. Why should the broadcasting industry get something for free that every other cable/satellite channel must pay for? Should the broadcasters give something in return?

Because the FCC has been slow to provide adequate spectrum for unlicensed broadband applications like Wi-Fi, growing numbers of software-savvy citizens are poised to adapt off-the-shelf Wi-Fi equipment to operate on the largely vacant, licensed bands adjacent to the crowded unlicensed frequencies. According to Scott Rafer, author of the provocative FCCster.com web site, unless the FCC acts quickly to provide more unlicensed spectrum for citizen access, the coming era of software defined radios will subvert the paradigm by which our airwaves are regulated and controlled.

We all see the Internet as a place of freedom, where new technologies, business innovation and competition flourish. This freedom has always been at the heart of what the Internet community and its original innovators celebrated.

Commissioner Michael J. Copps, of the Federal Communications Commission, contends that this openness is at risk. He will discuss the threat posed by a regulatory movement to replace open networks with closed systems and the impact this will have on both the Internet and the media.