ABSTRACT
Among leaders in the communications industry, insecurity is commonplace. The captains of communication behave not unlike the apocryphal horse thief captured by the sultan. The phone companies get ready to enter the cable business as cable plans to challenge the Baby Bells and broadcast stations. Communication companies no longer think of themselves as entities bound by national borders. The railroads atrophied because they thought they were in railroading rather than the broader transportation business. Science will master the switched, digitized interactive network we have come to call video-on-demand and will make access to the Internet a less fearsome process. If the local and long-distance telephone companies, for example, are to compete and customers are truly to enjoy the lower prices brisk competition should bring, then government cannot be absent. For government must ensure that the local telephone companies or the long-distance companies rent their wire to competitors.
