NEW COMMUNICATIONS SERVICES - WHAT DOES SOCIETY WANT

Historically, the deployment of new telecommunications services has ta ken years of effort and large amounts of investment. Thus, being able to predict the market acceptance before taking the business risk is cr itically important. Nevertheless, the record of success in such predic tions has been relatively poor. Many new services are unable to overco me the barrier posed by Metcalfe's law, which says that there is a sma ll value to any service shared by only a small number of users. An out standing example of breaking this barrier was the World Wide Web, whic h was jump-started by the promulgation of free browser software. The f ailure of the industry to have foreseen the Web is indicative of the f undamental inability to predict the future. Whereas engineers sometime s invoke the ''field-of-dreams'' argument (if we build it, they will c ome), industry executives demand quantitative business projections. In spite of this fundamental uncertainty in societal acceptance of a par ticular service, there are common themes in human needs-both in the dr eams and aspirations and in the everyday life of average citizens. Tel ecommunications has helped fulfill those aspirations and needs and wil l do so to a greater extent in the future.