Summary and Conclusions

Bruce has proposed ways to organize and restructure the business activities of the telecommunication sectors in emerging market countries. One proposal involves a bottom-up approach to telecommunications development whereby local groups construct and maintain, among other things, local access lines. Allowing (indeed, encouraging) local initiatives of this type offers a host of potential advantages that would not only improve the TO's ability to finance the expansion of the telecommunications infrastructure, but also would achieve other important economic and social objectives that reach far beyond the projects themselves.

This paper briefly reviews the competitive era in the history of the development of telephony in the United States. Although this period is still controversial in terms of the advantages and disadvantages of the competitive model in telecommunications, one particular development--local initiatives to construct and maintain farmer lines--played a positive role in rapidly extending telephone service throughout the United States. The farmer line concept is entirely consistent with the proposals put forth by Bruce, and its success in the United States supports the notion that the proposals could succeed elsewhere today. Consequently, I urge that in-country policymakers/regulators, manufacturers, multilateral lending institutions, independent nongovernmental organizations, private voluntary organizations, and local groups work together to test the bottom-up proposal for telecommunications development.