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America's telecommunications infrastructure relies on many technologies, from analog voice communications over circuit switches to packets of information carried by internet protocol. One day, all communications will likely be carried by internet protocol.  The issues are: when the transition will occur, and what the legal framework for telecommunications will be during that transition.

To address these issues, the Center for the Economics of the Internet hosted Commissioner Ajit Pai of the Federal Communications Commission.

In May 2012, Ajit V. Pai was nominated to the Federal Communications Commission by President Barack Obama and confirmed unanimously by the United States Senate for a term that will end on June 30, 2016.

Commissioner Pai received a B.A. with honors from Harvard University in 1994 and a J.D. from the University of Chicago in 1997, where he was an editor of the University of Chicago Law Review and won the Thomas J. Mulroy Prize. In 2010, Pai was one of 55 individuals nationwide chosen for the 2011 Marshall Memorial Fellowship, a leadership development initiative of the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

91���� Institute Senior Fellow and Center Director Harold Furchtgott-Roth moderated the discussion.