Telecommunications Policy and the Future of Work

The challenge of telecommunications policy for the future of work is fundamentally about parity between workers and employers in the information age. Mobile technology enables on-demand labor practices and ubiquitous monitoring, or can provide workers with ready access to media production tools and networks for collaboration and distribution. High-speed networks can connect industrial worksites or worker centers to data storage, software and artificial intelligence at distributed locations. Who can use these technologies and networks and to what ends is determined by threshold questions of telecommunications policy: whether deployment and management are left entirely to the private market, or if baseline levels of service and basic principles of openness and interconnection are preserved.