FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:        News Media contact:
  September 29, 1999            Rosemary Kimball at (202) 418-0511
  
       FCC CHAIRMAN KENNARD OUTLINES PLAN TO CREATE 
             GLOBAL INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE
First Sitting FCC Chairman to Visit Africa Discusses Development Initiative
                              
  Washington, DC   William E. Kennard, Chairman of the Federal
  Communications Commission (FCC), today outlined his vision for how
  developed countries can assist developing countries in the use of competitive
  regulatory policies to increase teledensity and expand access to advanced
  services. He cited specific examples of how this is working in Botswana and
  South Africa, two countries he visited last month.
  
  He spoke at an African Communications Development Breakfast Forum and
  Dialogue in Washington, DC.
  
  He detailed a three-part plan that included: universal access, the free flow
  of information across borders; and the creation of an institute dedicated to
  training in telecommunications regulation.
  
  Universal access, he said, meant not only ensuring that the next
  generation of telecom services is available to as many people as possible, but,
  more importantly, that the level of teledensity throughout the world is raised so
  that everyone at least has basic telephone service.
  
  He said that governments need to embrace the Internet and other new
  technology and the enormous access to information and ideas that it brings to all
  their citizens.  Allowing the Internet to develop free and unencumbered is not
  only desirable, but is also inevitable. 
  
  Chairman Kennard announced a desire to work with industry and other countries
  to establish an institute to provide the training and technical assistance
  necessary to establish transparent and predictable regulatory regimes.  "The
  institute, " he said, "must be focused, and technologically and ideologically
  neutral."
  
  He called upon his audience to find creative ways to ensure the transfer
  of the knowledge and training necessary to build a global information
  infrastructure. 
  
                          - FCC -