Paving the Way for the Highway

Washington

Fresh from briefing reporters about an upcoming multi-billion-dollar auction of the public airwaves, Reed E. Hundt eases into a sofa in his corner office at the Federal Communications Commission to make his case for networking every classroom for the "information age."

"We're talking about auctioning spectrum so that adults can move into the 21st century and global communications," says the F.C.C.'s chairman. The problem is "we have kids in the 19th century in...