Alan K. McAdams

Professor of Managerial Economics, Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University

BA. Yale; MBA and PhD, Stanford; at Cornell University since 1960

Prof. McAdams is a member of the AEA, the American Economic Association; is a Senior Member IEEE, the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers; Member, The Computer Society. He served on the IEEE-USA's Competitiveness Committee; is past Chair (2000-2002), Committee on Communications and Information Policy (CCIP), past-Chair its Subcommittees on High Performance Computing, Technology Leadership; Member, several current Subcommittees; plus the Computer Society’s committee on Scientific Supercomputing. In 1994 received IEEE-USA's Professional Achievement Award.

Professor McAdams chairs the CCIP Subcommittee on Advanced Fiber Networks (AFNs), sheparded the IEEE Position Statement, “Accelerating Advanced Broadband in the U.S.” (2003), through its Board of Directors, edited the “Report from the Workshop: This Decade’s (R)evolutionary Telecommunications Paradigm” (2003), developed and Chaired the Workshop: “U.S. National Policy for Accelerating Broadband Deployment” (2002) jointly sponsored by the IEEE-USA and Cornell as follow-on to the Joint IEEE-USA/Cornell University Workshop of 1999-2000: “The Evolution of the U.S. Telecommunication Infrastructure over the Next Decade,” which he also chaired.

At Cornell he is 1996 and also the 1998 recipient of the S & M Russell, "Distinguished Teaching Award," presented annually by the Johnson School's Five -Year Reunion Class. He is member of the Faculty Senate, served on its Executive Committee; served two three year terms on the Faculty Advisory Board on Information Technologies (FABIT), chaired its Off-Campus Networking Subcommittee.

Publications include: "The World in 2010, The All Fiber Scenario," (2000); “The Evolution of the U.S. Telecommunications Infrastructure over the Next Decade,” (2000); "Connecting Business and the Environment" (Editor, 1998); "Internet Public Goods" in Internet Economics (MIT Press, 1997); "Pursuing the National Information Infrastructure Dialog" IEEE-USA (Editor, 1994); "Perspectives on Telecommunications in the NII," IEEE-USA (Editor, 1993); "HDTV in the Information Age" (1991); "Economic Benefits and Public Support of a National Education and Research Network" (six monographs, 1988); "The Computer Industry," in Structure of American Industry (1982); Key Working papers include: "Resources that Are Inherently Not Scarce (INS) (1998);" "Different Strokes for Different Folks" [for INS Goods] (1997).

Professor McAdam's Web Site
Website for Advanced Fiber Networks (AFN)

Presentation

US Knowledge-Based Economy/Competitiveness Demand
Preeminent U.S. Telecom Infrastructure

The world is changing rapidly in ways that require policy makers and others to understand just how dangerous the current Telecom infrastructure position of the US is for its international competitiveness.
The Japanese have now further raised the bar. They are moving rapidly to full Fiber-to-the-Business and Fiber-to-the-Home with networks currently at 100 Mbps, but easily upgradeable to Gbps. Their current DSL deployments already match those of Korea, and thus both countries have capabilities superior to what the US ILECs could achieve should they eventually deploy the PON (and thus shared) infrastructure they agreed to in 2003 -- that Verizon is now testing.

The presentation will include the following points:

1. The US is a Knowledge-Based economy that cannot afford to allow the Japanese or any other nation to achieve insurmountable advantage over it in the Telecom infrastructure -- that itself is a Knowledge Good.
2. The US Telecom infrastructure must again become preeminent if the nation is to maintain its competitive and comparative advantages in knowledge-based goods and services in world competition.
3. The current US telecom and MSO-cable infrastructures are woefully inadequate to this task and their financial condition is such that they are unlikely soon, if ever, to be capable of providing the infrastructure that the US world-competitive-position demands.
4. Many other nations are currently deploying 50-100 Mbps -- symmetric -- while the US infrastructure is mired in controversy and likely future bankruptcies with 1-3 Mbps -- Asymmetric, i.e., 1-3 Mbps down; kilobits up.
5. The most likely source of sufficient financing to move the U.S. to Fiber-to-the-Business and Fiber-to-the-Home on a time-scale approximating that of Japan is through working cooperatively with municipalities to deploy end-user-owned Advanced Fiber Networks (AFNs).
6. While natural monopoly is possible through AFN networks, fortuitously, monopoly is easily preventable through end-user-ownership of such networks -- since one cannot monopolize oneself.

The US must act now to recreate a world-preeminent Telecom infrastructure. This can be done in a timely manner by working cooperatively with municipalities and other not-for-profits following the incentives faced by end-users under end-user-ownership of the networks.

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