Written By: Dan Robinson

Jessica Rosenworcel looks at policy challenges for the next decade

The chair of America’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) foresees a single network future where space-based comms will be integrated with terrestrial networks to ensure connectivity anywhere.

Jessica Rosenworcel was speaking as part of a discussion at the Princeton University Center for Information Technology Policy, New Jersey late last week.

Predicting the future is a dangerous business, she joked, and even smart people can get it wrong – really, really wrong. As examples, she noted McKinsey & Company’s forecast in the 1980s that there would only be about 900,000 cellphones globally by the turn of the millennium, and she highlighted the claim by former Intel CEO Andrew Grove, who said: “the idea of a wireless personal communicator in every pocket is a pipe dream.”