Universal Service/Network Democracy
Introductory Information
(August 19 - August 25)


Join the Information Renaissance in an on-line seminar on the provisions of the Telecommunications Act which deal with Universal Service for schools and libraries. Participants will include teachers, librarians, school administrators, people from the business community, and government staff. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 represents the first major revision of federal telecommunications policy in 62 years. The new Universal Service provisions offer an important opportunity to ensure that the needs of the education and library communities will be met. Your participation will help make this happen.


Table of Contents


Background

The Telecommunications Act of 1996

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 has rewritten basic telecommunications law for the first time since 1934. There are two prominent themes in the new Telecommunications Act:
  1. Competition. The Act is intended to foster broad competition between cable, telephone and other telecommunications suppliers. This has the potential to accelerate the introduction of new services and lower prices to consumers.

  2. Universal Service. These provisions are intended to prevent the establishment of a two-tier society with information "haves" and "have-nots".

Universal Service

The Universal Service provisions of the 1934 telecommunications act were primarily intended to guarantee that rural telephone subscribers would be able to obtain service and that their service would be no more expensive than comparable services sold to urban customers.

The new Universal Service provisions go beyond the provisions of the 1934 law in several ways. First of all, they extend the range of services that may be covered to include new technologies. In addition, through the "Snowe-Rockefeller Amendment" they establish a new Universal Service fund for schools, libraries and rural health care providers. The Universal Service provisions for schools and libraries have the potential to allow the connection of all of the nation's classrooms and libraries to the Internet. How this potential is realized will depend upon proceedings now under way at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

The Rule Making Process

The FCC has issued a public "Notice of Proposed Rule Making" on Universal Service. This provides an opportunity for public comment before a Federal/State Joint Board which is charged with writing the rules to implement the Universal Service provisions of the Telecommunications Act. FCC staff are presently working with public comments presented to the Commission and using these comments to help construct the new rules.

Needs of Schools and Libraries

In recent years there have been great strides in the implementation of networking technology in local schools and libraries. The experience gained in this activity should now be brought to bear on the FCC's rule making process in the area of Universal Service provisions for schools and libraries. Practitioners at the local level can identify where technology has been most successful and can predict accurately the near-term needs of their own organizations.


Network Democracy

Past history

The FCC's rule making process has previously been a rather closed process. The only authoritative repository of public comment is on a computer system accessible only in the FCC's offices. This means that for any group to be a full participant in the FCC's proceedings it has typically been necessary for them to have offices in Washington.

On-line Repository

In order to extend public access to people outside of Washington, Information Renaissance has purchased copies of all comments and replies submitted to the FCC. This material has been scanned or converted from other electronic media and placed on-line for access through the Internet. Thus, for the first time, there will be broad access to the full range of materials under consideration by the FCC in its rule making process.

On-line Seminar

During the five week period from August 26 - September 27, 1996, Information Renaissance will conduct an on-line seminar on the topic of the provisions of the Telecommunications Act which deal with Universal Service for schools and libraries. The seminar will be targeted at local school and library personnel interested in gaining familiarity with the Telecommunications Act and in helping to ensure that their schools and libraries will be able to obtain the telecommunications services that they most need as the Act is implemented.

The seminar will deal with the Act itself, with FCC procedures to implement the Act and with specific telecommunications needs of schools and libraries nationwide. Participants will include teachers and librarians, school administrators, FCC and other federal agency staff and people from the business community. It will seek to share expertise among these groups and to identify the most productive ways to use the new Telecommunications Act to provide needed services at the local level.

What's at stake?

In dollar terms the stakes of the Universal Service debate are large. Initial comments before the FCC set the level of possible subsidies at between $0.3 billion and $3 billion a year. Broad public participation in the implementation of the Telecommunications Act will help ensure that the final provisions of the Act will provide assistance which is on the scale required to address educational needs at the local level and focused to have the maximal impact on these issues.


Participation

Who should take part

The on-line seminar will involve teachers, school support personnel and local librarians as its primary audience. In order to provide necessary expertise on technical, economic and legal issues invitations will be extended to all parties which have submitted comments or reply comments on Universal Service issues to the FCC.

Participation will be open to all interested parties, within the limits of the technical capabilities of Information Renaissance to support the activity. If the seminar is over-subscribed, priority will be given to people in the primary target group.

Registration options

Discussions in the seminar will take place via electronic mail, with an archive of all mail being made available through the project Web site. Anyone will be able to view this material, but if you want to be able to make your own submissions, you must be registered for the seminar. There are three options available for registration, depending on the primary means by which you expect to access seminar material:
Mailing list.
If you select this option, you will receive individual copies of each message posted to the discussion. This is the best way to remain current with material in the seminar, although it could generate a large number of messages in your daily in-box.

Mailing list digest.
Under this option you will receive a single message each day which contains all of the day's posting in the on-line discussion. This makes for fewer messages in your in-box, but it delays your receipt of new postings.

Web access.
Under this option you will not receive regular postings in the form of personal e-mail. Rather, you will have to check the project Web site to see what's new in the discussion.

How to register

To register for the seminar, please fill out the on-line registration form. This form requests the following information: The first six items are required of all registrants. You are encouraged to provide additional information, which may be entered in the form of plain text or HTML, allowing you to cite hot links to projects with which you are affiliated. This registration information will be made available via the project Web site.

If you have not already done so, please register now.

The on-line registration form assumes that you have a Web browser that can handle forms. If you don't, please write to register@info-ren.pitt.edu for a form which you can fill out and submit via e-mail. But please use the on-line form if your browser is able to handle it.

Information on people who have already registered is available on-line.

How the seminar will work

Participants will use a combination of electronic mail and World Wide Web access to communicate with each other during the period in which the seminar will be in operation. The seminar's Web site includes a library of material relating to the Universal Service provisions of the Telecommuncations Act, including all Comments and Reply Comments that have been submitted to the Federal Communications Commission on this subject.

All on-line discussions will be archived and indexed to be made accessible through the seminar's Web site. This means that you can participate either through e-mail or through the Web, as you prefer. The archived discussions will be sent to the FCC as an ex parte submission on behalf of Information Renaissance. In this manner, all discussions in the seminar will become part of the FCC's official record. In simple terms, this means that your voice will be heard as part of the FCC's decision making process on this important issue.

Schedule

The seminar will take place during the five week period from August 26 - September 27, 1996. Registration will be open starting August 19, 1996. The library is currently open for browsing, but material continues to be added to it, and existing material continues to be proofread and formatted. A more detailed seminar schedule will be added to this section of the Web site shortly before the seminar begins.


Sponsorship

Initial funding for the on-line seminar is being provided by the following companies and foundations: Information Renaissance is grateful to these supporters for making this unique activity available on the short timescale required by the FCC's implementation schedule. Additional funding is being sought from other telecommunications providers and private foundations so that the seminar will be able to serve teachers, librarians and other interested people from all regions of the United States. If you work with a telecommunications provider and would like to help Information Renaissance develop the necessary support for this activity, please write to sponsors@info-ren.pitt.edu.


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