[nb] Universal service
Robert Frieden, Penn State, College of Communications
Jonathan Askin, Pulver.com
Jonathan Weinberg, Wayne State, Law
Kevin Werbach, Wharton School
Brad Ramsay, Nat’l Assoc. of Regulatory Utilities Comissioners
Matthew Brill, FCC
Topic: “Should universal service contributions be required of all IP-enabled services? Or only those that use telephone numbers or connect to the traditional telephone network.”
From the FCC site:
The goals of Universal Service, as mandated by the 1996 Act, are to promote the availability of quality services at just, reasonable, and affordable rates; increase access to advanced telecommunications services throughout the Nation; advance the availability of such services to all consumers, including those in low income, rural, insular, and high cost areas at rates that are reasonably comparable to those charged in urban areas.
[Missed the first five minutes. Even bloggers have to pee.]
Askin: Wireless is decimating plain-old-telephone-systems (POTS). It seems strange to point to VOIP as the death knell for the universal service regime. We’re going to have to move to a proposal that’s either numbers- or connections-based. [Ok, not sure what that means. Later: “Numbers” refers to telephone numbers, not numbers of telephones or calls.]
Werbach: Blow it up! This is a very complex topic. It’s a mess. The social policy goal of providing universal service is a good one. How do we move from this incredibly messy system to something that works better? When you add VoIP, you have an unresolvable conflict. If voice is an application, any attempt to chase it down and apply universal service subsidies to it will fail? E.g., how do you apply it to Skype, a free app written by Swedes? On the other hand, we need something technologically neutral. Using numbers is a good idea: When you get a phone number, some subsidy will be collected through that, not through your actual phone charges. We should make the distribution technologically neutral as well.
Weinberg: We need to rethink the whole system.
Brill: The best thing about the number approach is we know what they are and who’s got them, so it can be administered. But, it’s not future-proof. Connection-based charges are hard to administer because carriers don’t always know how many connections they have. Policing it is hard. But it is more future-proof. Either way, we’re talking about spreading the burden over all users of the PSTN (public switched telephone network). We’re going to have to step in because we need a sustainable universal service program, and it’ll be either numbers- of conections-based.
Astin: The current universal service is devastating to broadband deployment. We need some serious national broadband program. If you won’t do a national highway-style project, then we’ll have a tax.
Werbach: The Internet model is different in that there’s an initial cost to build it, but then costs go down, unlike other systems. So, if we’re going to have a universal system, we need one that providies the intial costs, but not continuing costs at the same level.
Crawford (moderator): How about a reverse auction?
Brill: Nope.
Frieden: One reason we’re 15th in broadband adoption is that our dialup rates (isp and phone service) are so cheap.
Q: (Isenberg) What is the most efficient way to deliver services most efficiently to people who don’t have these services? That’s the goal of the Universal Service fund. Let me propose that what you’ve got is way over-specified. Nuke it! Instead, if the FCC did their job and got out of the way and let the technology flow through to the end user, we’d have twice as much to the end user in 18 months [because of Moore’s Law]. The only thing the regulators need to do is get out of the way.
Werbach: Not enough assessment has been done of what’s available now, on the ground.
Brill and Askin agree that the ETC (Eligible Telephony Carriers?) program has improved dramatically in the past three years.
Q: (Bruce) The first thing to do is audit the charges and surcharges on phone bills.
Categories: Uncategorized dw
David Weinberger is blogging the
David Weinberger is blogging the Bellhead Nethead conference, and posted this panel discussion about the Universal Service fee and whether it should be required of VoIP phones as well. The goal of the Universal Service fee was to provide access…
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