US/ND-1: Re: this week's assignments
Re: this week's assignments
Ronda Hauben (rh120@columbia.edu)
Fri, 30 Aug 1996 11:06:58 -0400 (EDT)
I was on vacation in the Netherlands when the mailing list began am now
finally back home so I can participate in the online discussion.
I still need to read through what went on this past week and will
do so as soon as I can.
My comments into the FCC rulemaking in May focused on the need to
open up the process of the rulemaking to a broader set of people,
since those rules would be affecting many more people than have
a way to participate in the standard rulemaking process. I also
pointed to a summary that I had prepared of the NTIA (National
Telecommunications Information Adminstration ) online conference
held November 1994 on the issues of universal service and access
(among other issues). That online conference made it possible to have
a broad ranging set of views presented, but then was ignored by
Congress and the Executive Branch when they privatized the NSFnet
and when they drafted the guidelines for the Universal Service
rulesetting in the recent Telecommunications Act legislation.
It is good to see that the FCC has agreed to participate in this
online conference, though I don't yet know what their method of
participation is. And I don't really understand who is sponsoring
the conference and why, as it seems it should be sponsored by
the FCC to have the broadest set of considerations offered toward
their rulesetting process as possible.
[Moderator's Note: Please look on the Web site for this sort of
information. I hope it's clearly stated there. Information
Renaissance is sponsoring this activity. Funding is being
supplied by a mix of private and corporate sources. I am continuing
to work to expand the base of this support, which is not meant to
prejudice the content of the seminar toward the viewpoints of any
particular party in the debate. The reason for holding the seminar
is to allow practitioners in the educational applications
of networking technology to have a voice in regulations which
could have a major impact on this field. More broadly, it is
hoped to bring together the educators and librarians with direct
experience with successful applications of the technology, the
business people with knowledge of what new technology is likely
to be available, and the government people who have the task of
implementing the Telecom Act so as to meet its legislative objective.
These objectives involve both open competition and univeral service,
features which occasionally clash in practical application.
As for who is participating, and how, there is a list of registrants on
the Web site, with information on their affiliations and interests. As
mentioned in the Etiquette section of the Web site (under Preliminaries),
each participant is taking part as an individual, not as an official
representative of their organization. In addition to the registered
participants, there are others with "read only" access who may be
monitoring the project's Web site. I have asked people who want to make
contributions to the discussion to register so that everyone can be
here on an equal basis. All of the material presented in the on-line
discussion and on the Universal Service/Network Democracy Web site will
be presented to the FCC as an ex parte submission by Information
Renaissance. This gives the discussion some official status in the
proceedings. More important is the fact that FCC staff are listening
and are interested in what is taking place here. It is our task to
make the discussions coherent enough so as to highlight issues of
major importance to practitioners in the field. If we are able to
do this, the chances that the FCC will draft rules which can adequately
support these practitioners will be significantly increased.]
>It's exciting to see the variety of viewpoints expressed so far in
>the on-line discussion. While variety and broad range are
>welcome, we also have a need to focus on specific issues if we
>are going to have any significant impact with regard to the
>formulation of policy on Universal Service.
There is a need to broaden, not narrow the focus of the online
conference, as there was none of the needed public discussion
before Congress when they drafted the Telecommunications Act of 1996,
and thus to follow a narrow process before identifying the crucial
principles will be to doom the value of what the online process can provide.
[Moderator's Note: Good point, but we can have a broad discussion
which takes up various topics in sequence. If we try talking about
everything at once, the discussion will become noisy and confusing.
I don't want to rule out any topics for the discussion, but I do
want to put together a coherent list of topics and parcel them out
during the time available so that we can concentrate upon each area
in turn. And apologies for such a long-winded note this time. I
really shouldn't make my notes longer than the text they accompany.]