US/ND-2: Welcome to Week Two of the US/ND seminar

Welcome to Week Two of the US/ND seminar

Bob Carlitz (bob@info-ren.pitt.edu)
Tue, 3 Sep 1996 08:44:03 -0400 (EDT) 

Welcome to the second week of the Universal Service/Network Democracy
on-line seminar.  You will find that the seminar's home page,
	http://www.info-ren.org/projects/universal-service
has been updated to include new items for the current week.  I have
provided a brief summary of last week's discussion and have tried to
set the direction for this week's discussion and for the material that
we will cover in the upcoming weeks.

In an effort to fit the broad range of issues covered in last week's
discussion into a manageable set of topics, I am proposing the
following list:

	SCOPE. What services should be covered by the Universal
		Service subsidies?
	AGGREGATION. How can schools and libraries share services
		with each other and with other community groups
		to maximize efficiency and effectiveness?
	ALLOCATION. Who gets the subsidies and under what conditions?
	INTEGRATION. How will new discounts fit in with existing
		programs?

Please consult the Web site for a more detailed explanation of this
list.  I believe each topic can be stretched so as to cover everything
we talked about last week, including all the points raised in Section
254 of the Telecom Act, the paragraphs in the Notice of Proposed Rule
Making that deal with schools and libraries, and the relevant portions
of the FCC's Request for Further Comments.  All of these primary
source materials are available in excerpt form (for easy downloading)
at the seminar's Web site.

This week's discussion will focus upon the SCOPE of the proposed
Universal Service subsidies.  This will get us into such questions
as whether internal wiring should be covered, and the possibilities
of including support for such things are user training and technical
support.  These issues are fundamental to the structure of the
FCC's implementation.  You will find strong viewpoints on each side
of these issues.

In this week's discussion I particularly want to encourage those
teachers and librarians who have not yet posted to the us-nd mailing 
list to make their views known.  We should strive for a balance in
which each participant posts an average of one message a week.  We
aren't doing too badly in terms of distribution of postings, but
many people have yet to be heard from.  Please take an active role
in the seminar, both through on-line postings and contributions
to the seminar's library of contributed materials.  Specific
assignments for the week can be found on the Web site.

You may want to bookmark the page
	http://www.info-ren.org/projects/universal-service/this-week.html
This pointer will change each week to pick up the current week's
material.  Last week it pointed to "week-one.html"; now it's
pointing to "week-two.html".  Or you can simply refer back to the
seminar's home page and jump from there to "This Week's Activities".

Please let me know if you have comments on the conduct of the course
or the construction of the Web site.  Insofar as there is time
and labor available to accommodate your requests, we'll try to do
so throughout the seminar.

Bob Carlitz
Moderator