US/ND-1: RE: Support
RE: Support
Ronda Hauben (rh120@columbia.edu)
Fri, 30 Aug 1996 13:58:14 -0400 (EDT)
Responding to a post from: "Hotka, Cathy" <HotkaC@nrf.com>
>Remember that the concept of universal service is to ensure that everyone
>has a base level of connectivity -- up until now, that has meant a black
>rotary dial phone in the home. Your proposal would increase that level of
>support to ensuring that everyone understands how to use any of the various
>kinds of software that schools or libraries might install. Are you willing
>to see the open-ended cost of that idea reflected in your home phone bill?
That's why having some policy that means that universal service
means access to the communication that the Net makes possible,
such as access to Usenet, email and text based browsers that
a freenet makes available is a means that can both satisfy the
necessary commitment to universal service and the low cost that
is needed to make this available to all.
Encouraging universities or colleges, and other nonprofit
institutions that might have excess Internet access they
can make available, via some kind of subsidy to nonprofit
institutions, rather than to profit making bottom line
corporate interests, would seem to be more the kind of
policy that should be considered.
In the most recent issue of the Amateur Computerist (a newsletter
we make available online and which I gave to the chief of staff
of the FCC when he left out criteria for universal service to the home
in the talk he gave at INET '96 in Montreal) is available via
email. You can write to ronda@umcc.umich.edu or jrh@umcc.umich.edu
for a copy. The most recent issue included a history of cleveland
freenet, a report on the Telecommunities '95 Conference in Canada
where they raised the challenge of providing access to the Internet
to all by the year 2000, the Access for All FAQ from Germany, etc.
Ronda