Cost Contingency as the Standard Deviation of the Cost Estimate for Cost Engineering

The United States currently has a communications policy in place that does not state clearly its own goals, yet applies regulations that greatly affect outcomes. A better communications policy would substitute markets for regulation as a way to determine both what is sold and what price is paid while continuing to be conscious of specific market power concerns and obtaining efficiently social benefits. The Administration and Congress should create a bipartisan and independent commission to suggest a complete overhaul of the law and policy for communications, and to do so by mid-2005. In this paper, we make several proposals to improve communications policy: