Tom Wheeler

There is the thing that changed the economics of the created the great opportunity for these digital platform companies is what the economists call network effects.

And a network effect is basically that you go to a site because that's where everybody else is.

You go to Facebook because that's where your friends are.

You go to Google because that's where the information is.

And you may have another alternative to Google, but it doesn't have as rich information.

a source of information as google does and so these network effects tend to produce um a winner takes all kind of situation because all of the activities used to be

Um, the competitive activities get rung out by the, by the very design of the system, uh, that takes advantage of these network effects.

So if we have a new set of realities like that, and again, I'm not for stepping in and having heavy handed regulation, but I think that there should be.

some basic ground rules and i think the companies by the way ought to be involved in the establishment of those basic ground rules so let's talk about how we do that so why you know why do you say i came out of the industry mike you know i know and and i um i you know watch for instance the evolution from 1g to 2g to 3g to 4g to 5g and now 6g for for smartphones

Why did those changes take place?

Well, it took place because technology changed and the market changed and the companies said, we want to evolve with that.

And so we will get together and we will develop technical standards so that you can, any device works on any network in any country.

Major breakthrough.

But then they stopped.

And they didn't say, well, let's think what are the consequences of this?

And should we have behavioral standards?

You talked about your experience with Alexa a few minutes ago.

There is an industry group putting together the technical standards so that all of the connected devices in the house will be able to interface with each other.

It is a terrifically good idea.

I mean, I guess there's a purpose why Roomba ought to talk to Alexa.