08 December 2000

FCC's Kennard says 10 nations have signed work plans

Washington -- Turkey becomes the 10th nation to sign a work plan with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in a development initiative designed to help emerging economies' develop modern telecommunications sectors, FCC Chairman William Kennard says.

The work plans are designed to help the nations establish liberalized, competitive telecommunications sectors, in which transparent regulation using independent regulatory agencies is the norm, Kennard said December 8 at a Washington briefing and signing.

Kennard said he expected the telecommunications development initiative launched last year to continue after the Clinton administration leaves office January 20, 2001. The initiative is important because of information sharing between the United States and developing countries, and because it helps set priorities for global telecommunications expansion, he said.

The work plans are also designed to harmonize global regulations of telecommunications, increase the stature of independent regulation domestically, and build goodwill for the United States, he said.

Regulators in Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, Central Europe, and Africa have had the opportunity to identify their priorities and discuss and analyze these issues extensively with FCC experts, he said. Sometimes the FCC has had to turn down requests from certain countries to initiate a work plan because they had not yet developed a sufficiently transparent telecommunications process, he said.

In addition to Turkey, the FCC has work plans with South Africa, Uganda, Ghana, Peru, Argentina, Jamaica, India, Thailand and Hungary.

Work plans, while tailored to a specific country's needs, cover such areas as long distance telephone network competition, rulemaking procedures, Internet policies, promotion of telecommunications infrastructure development, telecommunications training, universal access, and regulatory approaches to anti-competitive behavior.

To accompany the development initiative, Kennard said an FCC regulator's course has been developed along with the Cisco Learning Institute for use on the Internet that includes modules on regulation, management of telecommunications systems, licensing, the Internet and the mass media.

Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State.Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov