Office of Telecommunications Policy

Overview
The White House Office of Telecommunications Policy (OTP) was established in 1970. In 1978, it was merged, along with the Department of Commerce's Office of Telecommunications (OT), into the newly created National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).

The OTP worked to unfreeze and deregulate the cable industry and implement the "Open Skies" policy, whereby any qualified company could launch a domestic communications satellite, avoiding the monopoly industry structure that existed in international communications.

OTP’s two major initiatives concerning cable included the 1971 Cable Copyright Compromise and the 1974 Cabinet Committee on Cable Communications Cable: Report to the President, or “The Whitehead Report.”