On Thu, 1 Jul 2010, William Herrin wrote:
On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 8:04 AM, Gadi Evron <g...@linuxbox.org> wrote:
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/web/07/01/finland.broadband/index.html?hpt=T2
In the US, the Communications Act of 1934 brought about the creation
of the "Universal Service Fund." The idea, more or less, was that
The Universal Service Fund was created as a result of the Bell divesture
in 1984; and extended by the Telecommunications Act of 1996. It didn't
exist before then. There was the Kingsbury Agreement in 1913 (One
System, One Policy, Universal Service), but universal service didn't mean
the same thing. Universal service meant if you had a phone, it could call
any other phone; but there wasn't a goal of a phone in every house until
the 1960s.
every phone line customer contributed to the fund (you'll find it
itemized on your phone bill) and the phone companies had to charge the
same for every phone line regardless of where delivered in their
territory but when initially installing an unusually difficult
(expensive) phone line the phone company was entitled to reimburse its
cost from the fund.
As part of the natural monopoly, there was a system of rate averaging and
settlements. But there was often radically different prices based on
public policy goals, for example business phone users paid more and
residential phone users paid less. Long distance prices were kept high
in order to keep monthly residential bills low. Its very difficult to
maintain public policy price differentials in a competitive environment;
but it was also difficult to maintain those prices even in a monopoly
environment.
The early ARPANET/Internet indirectly benefited from some of those public
policy pricing decisions in the US.
In 1996 a certain inventor of the Internet decided that the universal
service fund needed to pay for PCs in rural schools (the "E-Rate"
program) instead of improving rural communications...
The 1996 Universal Service Fund also expanded who paid into the fund. If
the Universal Service Fund is expanded again to pay for "broadband," the
biggest question is how will the "contribution base" be expanded to pay
for it?
