Five Questions For Senator John SununuFive Questions For Senator John Sununu

Photograph by David Deal

1

Stay Current
Sununu has advice for his fellow members of Congress on how to stay on top of IT. "The best methodology is to ask an eighth-grader, ask a ninth-grader, ask a 10th-grader. But really, I've found that it's important to use the services, use the products, and ask serious business questions of the executives at the providers themselves."

2

Power To The People
"Consumers in general are a very powerful force. In one way or another, they destroyed Betamax because the Betamax-VHS war came down to the content, the value, the choices."

3

Net Neutrality
The senator wants phone companies to play fair, but he cautions against regulation, saying the market will do its own work. "Anyone who wants to limit Internet choices to particular offerings will have their head handed to them."

4

VoIP Forever
"My sense is if you're a new firm, say, 10 employees, you're going to buy and install an IP phone system that's integrated with whatever internal network you have. That's the future. There's no turning back."

5

Obsolete Laws
Sununu cautions that laws don't always keep pace with technology. "If you write a law that assumes long distance is the most valued voice component, when it turns out that the per-minute cost of long distance has gone to zero, you're going to have to do something."