Abstract
The computer and communications industries, drawing upon a common base of technology and competing for the same markets, are growing increasingly interdependent. Convergence of the technology used by these industries is evinced by the development in the telecommunications industry of an electronic switching system controlled by a stored program very similar to the system software utilized by computers. In this Article, Wayne Robins details recent technological developments that are crucial to both industries and describes their fierce competition for markets. This interrelationship raises many problems which the federal government must resolve in order to control effectively the development of data communications.