March 13, 1998
                                
            FCC COMMISSIONER MICHAEL POWELL ADVISES
          INVESTMENT ANALYSTS TO LOOK FOR EVIDENCE OF 
        REGULATORS PROMOTING INNOVATION AND COMPETITION
                                

     At a lunch meeting hosted today by "The Precursor Group" of the securities brokerage
firm Legg Mason, Inc., FCC Commissioner Michael Powell urged an audience of investment
analysts, policymakers, and industry representatives, to "keep a watchful eye on
communications developments in an effort to predict whether proposed [communications]
reforms will be implemented and whether they will be successful."

     Quoting Albert Einstein, Powell said, "The unleashed power of the atom has changed
everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe."
Reflecting on where is the country in the communications revolution, Powell remarked "I
often think of  Einstein's warning," and questioned whether the industry is "truly changing
enough, and quickly enough to accommodate" the transformation to a pro-competitive, de-
regulatory communications regime.

     Powell set forth several tenets of "new regulatory thinking" that should guide policy
leaders in light of the pro-competitive, de-regulatory environment and the immense power and
potential of communications technology unleashed:

               1)   Faith in competition, and courage to cede control to the marketplace;
               2)   Focus on innovation when dealing with network industries that are driven by
          technology;
               3)   Prepare for the regulatory implosion of traditionally distinct technologies and
          services;
               4)   Strive for regulatory efficiency.  In this regard, regulatory agencies must make
          timely decisions, be sensitive to business realities and capital markets, and shift
          their efforts to enforcement. 
     
Powell's remarks were featured as part of Legg Mason's Spring Investor Workshop. The
theme of the lunch forum was "Technology and Regulation."  

     "Full emancipation has not yet come to the information and communications industries,
because we have not fully changed our mode of regulatory thinking," Powell stated.  "The
digital explosion will ultimately demolish the byzantine regulatory edifice that communications
regulators have constructed over the past several decades.  The choice is whether to implode
the existing regulatory structure in a controlled manner, by strategically undermining its
foundations, . . . or whether to resist foolishly the force of change and allow the regulatory
structure to . . . crumble[] under the weight of its own inconsistencies."

     Commissioner Powell's speech can be downloaded from his internet site at
http://www.fcc.gov/commissioners/powell/ on the World Wide Web.

                              # # #