US/ND-5: Re: a message for the seminar
Re: a message for the seminar
Ronda Hauben (rh120@columbia.edu)
Fri, 27 Sep 1996 21:09:54 -0400 (EDT)
An open letter to Barbara_Pryor@rockefeller.senate.gov
and to the FCC and to the online seminar
In response to the email to the Information Renaissance
Seminar received on Sept. 26
>From: Barbara_Pryor@rockefeller.senate.gov [156.33.203.30]
>Senator Jay Rockefeller
>Message to participants in the Information Renaissance Seminar
Is there some reason that Senator Jay Rockefeller didn't
write directly if he wanted to communicate with people?
Are you on his staff? If so in what capacity?
Also, I wondered why the U.S. Senate and House didn't make any effort
to ask for the views of the U.S. citizenry before passing the
Telecommunications Act which takes away universal service from
the home user.
In Nov. 1994, there was an online NTIA hearing (which was
noncensorsed, as opposed to this tightly controlled online seminar)
where numerous U.S. citizens expressed their views about the need to
extend universal service to include the ability of people to have
home and public site access to the communications aspects of
the Internet, including email, Usenet newsgroups and a text
based browser like lynx.
Unfortunately, it seems no one in Congress working on the
new telecommunications law was interested in learning the
views of the citizens on the issues before them, and so they
ignored the NTIA Nov. 1994 online hearing. If you are interested,
there is a summary of the hearing at
http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/
It is chapters 11 and 14 of the draft version of the netbook.
>This on-line seminar on Universal Service illustrates the
>potential -- and the power -- of access to the Information
>Superhighway. As someone trying to make sure public policy
>promotes access, I appreciate the ideas, energy and interest
>generated by the group.
If Senator Jay Rockefeller was trying to promote access to
the Internet and continue universal service, he would have
not only consulted citizens and the online NTIA Nov. 1994
hearing, but he would have written into the new law strong
protection for the continuation and extension of universal
service both to the telephone and Internet for the home user,
as well as providing for community networks or Free-Nets that
would help make public access widely and freely available to
a minimum set of Internet communications.
>To be specific, I feel passionately about providing access to
>every American through the Snowe-Rockefeller provision of the
>Telecommunications Act. We have an enormous opportunity to
>promote access and enhance education with proper
>implementation of this bold new law. Thanks to this seminar,
To the contrary, the law is undertaking a substantial change
of the telecommunications infrastructure in the U.S. and was
drafted and is being implemented with no consultation with
those to whom universal service for the home user is important
and necessary.
The home users have been denied the right to any say in
the process whereby they are losing a right they have
had and continue to need. And the way the FCC is being encouraged
to draft rules for universal service despite the fact that the
home user has been denied access to any part of their hearing
process demonstrates that the new law, is an attack on rather
than an extension of universal service in telecommunications
for the home user.
>you understand the issues that we are debating as the Federal
>Communications Commission seeks to implement this important
>provision.
Unfortunately there are those who do understand the issues
set before the FCC by Congress and feel that it is
a swindle of the highest order for Congress to have
undertaken to rewrite the telecommunications laws by seeking
opinions and views from those who had a vested interest
in ending universal service to the home user and the POTS
concept that has made it possible to build a significant
and valuable telephone infrastructure in the U.S. over a
longer period of time.
Also, Congress failed to examine the history and development
of the Internet and to take on to build on that history
and development, which involved a great deal of U.S.
government investment and oversight as well as an Accepible
Use Policy directing that the infrastructure service
educational and scientific needs.
And Congress failed to examine the great social value of Bell
Labs as a research institution that could and did invent and
bring to the world important new technological developments
which have continued to make possible telephone service at
low cost in the U.S. The U.S. Congress reneged on the lessons
of the importance of the commitment to supporting a large scale
research laboratory that could and did develop the needed
scientific and technological advances necessary to maintain
an advanced telephone infrastructure. Instead we are being
promised the pie in the sky of "the so called market".
>I urge you to take the next steps after this seminar to
>generate the decisions and commitment we want to see as the
>Telecommunications Act is implemented. I urge you to contact
>public policymakers, at both the state and federal level
>regarding your views on access to telecommunications. Your
>voice can and should be heard. My best regards to you.
After the law has been written we are being told to be in contact
with state and federal officials who will be charged with
implementing a law created in a process that excluded our
input and interests.
Also, instead of the FCC being urged to have had an open hearing
process where it would welcome the views of all those who
understand the important of universal service and extending
the concept of POTS in the telephone infrastructure to
an Internet infrastructure, we are being told that we should now
better understand the law you have passed.
But we understand that we continue to have the right to and
the need for POTS and for a regulated telecommunications
infrastructure that provides universal service to the home
user. The law makers drafting the Telecommunications law
ignored this important obligation, and now the FCC is being
instructed to ignore this as well, and instead those who
have made the effort to speak out are being told that we
have spoken to continually deaf ears.
When will you and others in Congress acknowledge that you
have an obligation to hear from the citizens you are supposed
to be representing, rather than the narrow business interests
that are concerned with only their own profits rather than
the broader social interests in the U.S? When will you
recognize that you have an obligation to represent the
interests of citizens, rather than corporate entities that
are not citizens?
Unfortunately this new law contains the seeds to destroy
the communications infrastructure that is crucial to the
health and welfare of the entire population of the U.S.
It will give corporate entities all kind of ways of lower
their phone costs at the expense higher rates for the poorer
home telephone user. And now we are also being burdened with
subsidizing the schools and libraries and other entities
telephone and telecommunications costs so they can subsidize
private telecommunications entities.
The U.S. government, not the home telephone user, should be
charged with providing the help needed for the schools and
libraries in the U.S. to be connected to the Internet. That
was done in a very helpful way by the NSF, but instead of
building on those experiences, the financial burden
is being shifted to home users who are supposed to be the
recipient of not the providers of universal service.
Obviously, higher costs for home users for phone and Internet
access is not a way to provide access for all or universal
service. I am asking that you request that the FCC hold an
open online hearing of the public (including public access
locations for those who don't have Internet access now in the
way that the NTIA Nov. 1994 online hearing was held) and that
the online hearing be unmoderated so you can get the full range
of views of those who stand to loose the most under the new
special interest promoted telecommunications Act passed by
Congress in Feb. 1994.
Twice in the process of this online hearing I was told that
my posts wouldn't be sent to the online seminar, and I had
to spend my time protesting this process rather than being
encouraged to contribute to the process. Clearly this is not
a way to solicit the views of citizens in a public hearing,
but it is a way to dampen ones desire to participate.
Also, the issues that were allowed to be discussed during
the online seminar were very narrow, and the crucial issue
of maintaining and continuing the commitment to universal
service for the home user, we were told was not the issue
of this online seminar.
When will it be the issue of an open hearing process?
Sincerely,
Ronda Hauben
P.O. Box 250101
New York, N.Y. 10025-1531
i
rh120@columbia.edu
ronda@panix.com