Universal Service/Network Democracy
Week Five (September 23 - September 27)

In the final week of the Universal Service/Network Democracy on-line seminar, we will go over the following topics:

• Summary of the Fourth Week of the Seminar

• Future Universal Service/Network Democracy Seminars

• Integration with Existing Services and Coordination with Other Proceedings

• Assignments

• Schools and Libraries: 18 people, 29 messages (55%)
• Universities: 5 people, 9 messages (17%)
• State and federal government: 5 people, 5 messages (9%)
• Business: 8 people, 10 messages (19%)

In addition to the seminar's e-mail-facilitated discussion there was a new on-line survey on the subject of the allocation of Universal Service subsidies. So far 36 people have responded to this survey, the results of which are available on-line. Also available on-line are the detailed comments which survey respondents offered on some of the survey questions. This survey will continue to be available for additional people to fill out in the upcoming week.

Here is a brief overview of the survey results to date:

1. Mechanisms: What mechanism should be used to provide Universal Service subsidies to schools and libraries?

Slightly over 50% of the respondents favored a 100% discount "E-rate" with roughly 20% supporting cash grants and 20% supporting discounts on selected services. A strong majority favored some discount mechanism over cash grants or vouchers.

2. Bona Fide Requests: What minimal justifications should a school, library or school district be required to offer in support of requests for subsidized telecommunications services?

The most broadly-supported response to this question (offered by 50% of the respondents) was that requested services should support a real educational need. 44% of the respondents argued that any request from an authorized individual should be regarded as bona fide. 44% also favored district-approved technology plans. Small percentages (in the 20%-25% range) supported state-approved plans, progress toward goals of the Telecom Act, and demonstrated knowledge of technology options. While state-approved plans did not gain broad support in the survey, there was extensive discussion of this issue in this week's e-mail submissions, as noted below.

3. Extent: Should Universal Service subsidies extend to groups which provide educational materials or support for educational organizations, such as universities and colleges or community centers?

There was nearly a 50-50 split on this issue, with several people offering detailed comments on the topic.

4. Equity: How can the Universal Service Fund insure equity of access for all schools and libraries?

This question may not have been clearly-phrased. One third of the respondents selected "other" and provided detailed comments; 30% specified a baseline subsidy; 25% supported per capita subsidies; and 22% supported income-based subsidies. But only 5% mentioned population density as a factor. I had intended this as shorthand for service in rural areas. In many e-mail contributions there has been strong support for connectivity in rural areas and for the need for special attention to the needs of these areas. And detailed comments from the survey tend to underscore this viewpoint.

Please consult the on-line analysis for a more complete picture. Since a relatively small number of people have filled out the form so far, these results should be regarded as tentative. Please fill out the survey now if you have not already done so.

Highlights of the detailed comments from the survey are as follows:

• The mechanisms used to provide Universal Service subsidies to schools and libraries should be such as to encourage transmission efficiencies and competition among service providers. Subsidies which simply provide monopoly carriers with another assured revenue stream could be counterproductive if they simply raise telecommunication rates for the same community that is receiving the subsidies.

• There needs to be some assurance that Universal Service funds are leveraged to benefit their intended recipients. Some form of educational assessment should be tied to a continuation of any proposed subsidies.

• Colleges and universities can serve important roles as trainers and disseminators of technology practice. But subsidies for collaborations involving schools, libraries and universities or colleges should perhaps be limited to services purchased by the schools and libraries participating in the collaboration.

• Equity is a major issue for rural areas, where low population density and harsh geography can combine to make the cost of services far higher than in urban areas. Presently services such as ISDN, which is becoming commonplace in urban areas, are either unknown in rural areas or priced far above the cost of an equivalent number of POTS lines. (One ISDN line can carry data traffic equivalent to that of approximately 4 28.8 kilobit modems.)

• The issue of equity is closely tied to who administers the Universal Service Fund. Previously the Fund has been administered by the National Exchange Carrier Association. This arrangement would be inappropriate and a conflict of interest under the new Universal Service mandate, which calls upon the fund to do far more than simply allocate resources among the various carriers.

The principal topic for the fourth week's discussion had to do with the aggregation of services and competition in the provision of services. Several questions were offered to guide the discussion:

What examples exist of effective community collaborations?

This topic generated more discussion than we have seen on any other topic in the seminar. Many contributors cited examples of successful collaborations and regarded such activities as essential for the sustainable use of telecommunications in local schools and libraries. Only through such collaborative ventures can adequate support be provided and can services be aggregated so that schools and libraries can purchase affordable connectivity.

Does the Telecommunications Act promote such collaborations or endanger them?

Contributors emphasized the need for broad community collaborations. In Week One of the seminar there was much discussion of how effective such collaborations can be and how short-sighted it would be if the Act's Universal Service provisions were implemented in a manner which discouraged such collaborations.

How can an enhanced competitive environment help schools and libraries? Are there new services likely to result? Is dramatic price competition likely to occur?

One contributor pointed out the need to balance collaboration, which supports the public interest, with competition, which often uses profit as the sole measure of success. Several contributors argued that there is little competition in most rural areas, and hence one cannot argue that competition alone will provide for the affordable and equitable distribution of telecommunications resources. And one contributor noted that discounts funded by mandated rate increases are inherently non-competitive in nature insofar as they simply assure existing service providers a new revenue stream.

What structures exist to facilitate needed community collaborations in the development of telecommunications infrastructure? Is this activity typically driven by school districts, municipal governments, community groups, libraries or other organizations?

A variety of examples were offered in the on-line discussion. A common feature of all these examples is a buy-in at the local level. Wherever state-planned initiatives have been successful, it's been where they have achieved local support and understanding in their deployment. The present week's discussion will provide further examples of the successful application of telecommunications technology.

In addition to the topics listed above, there were a number of other threads of discussion which took place on-line. Several of them represented continuations and conclusions of the previous week's discussions, which covered issues such as:

• Wireless technologies

• Access to free e-mail

• Bona fide requests

Topics new to the present week's discussion included the following:

• The merits of state technology planning. Several nice examples of successful statewide initiatives were presented. It's unclear how broadly duplicated such efforts might be. A key feature, as noted above, was the existence of local buy-in. Without this feature, state plans threaten simply to increase the bureaucratic load on a local school district. What states can do quite effectively is to provide checklists for local planners and to help promulgate standards for technology implementation.

• The limits of technology planning. There is an obvious point which several contributors underscored - that it makes no sense to require district planning if there isn't going to be any funding for a district's plan, once completed. This suggests that an RFP process might be an effective mechanism for the distribution of available funds, since it incorporates some measure of planning but links it explicitly to the distribution of funds.

• Cost savings through networking technology. It was pointed out that efficiencies in record-keeping and information transfer can partially offset the cost of educational networks. This, in fact, was the original justification for a number of statewide networking efforts. The broader topic of how networks can save money is one that bears further discussion in the seminar.

• The demise of NPTN. It was noted with regret that the National Public Telecomputing Network has entered bankruptcy. This organization had popularized the concept of Freenets, and its financial difficulties are perhaps indicative of a broader problem with the funding and sustainability of community networking efforts. A well-structured Universal Service Fund should help address this problem.

The assignments for the fourth week were a continuation of previous assignments, namely to participate in the on-line discussion, to provide materials for the library of on-line resources and to complete the on-line survey. You can look directly at the full text of the on-line discussions and the many contributions to the on-line library to see how this activity has been progressing. We appreciate the effort that people have been putting into the seminar and urge you to continue this work in the seminar's concluding week.

• This activity is an important one. Federal officials working to develop rules for the implementation of the Universal Service provisions of the Telecommunications Act should have access to the opinions of those people who are working with telecommunications technology in local schools and libraries.

• The volume of material is somewhat overwhelming. While on-line access to the thousands of pages of comments that were submitted to the FCC on the subject of Universal Service makes this material accessible to local teachers and librarians for the first time, there is still too much for any individual to be able to absorb. Even the volume of contributions to the present seminar is a lot for most participants to handle.

• There is an ongoing need for this type of activity. When the Federal/State Joint Board makes its recommendations to the FCC in November, there will be another round of public comments to the FCC. At that time it might be appropriate to conduct another seminar which focuses upon the content of the Joint Board's report. At a later date there will be a mandated review of the success of the Telecom Act in providing advanced services to schools and librarians. Public discussion of this topic could be invaluable in helping the FCC to ascertain what has happened in the field.

How will new discounts fit in with existing programs? What examples can we cite of the effective use of telecommunications services in local schools and libraries? What other proceedings at the federal and state level should people in schools and libraries be following to assure that there will be adequate coordination of the various programs which impact telecommunications services for schools and libraries?

The final week of the Universal Service/Network Democracy on-line seminar will be devoted to exploring the fit of new Universal Service subsidies with existing programs and projects. We'll be looking for examples of existing subsidies which are key to the success of current telecommunications programs and brief descriptions of successful programs with an indication of how new Universal Service subsidies might impact such programs. In your contributions to the seminar you might consider addressing the following points:

• What successful telecommunications projects have you been involved with?

• Did these projects depend upon any special telecommunications rates? If so, give a brief description of these rates and indicate whether you think these rates might be jeopardized by new Universal Service subsidies. (This could happen if, for example, state PUCs were to decree that new subsidies supersede old rate structures.)

• Do your projects depend upon any particular tricks of the trade? If so, describe these imaginative applications of telecommunications technology, and indicate whether these applications might not be possible in the environment of new Universal Service subsidies.

• What are specific areas in which ongoing projects might benefit from new Universal Service subsidies?

• Are there projects currently in the planning stages whose viability will depend upon the structure of new Universal Service subsidies? If so, indicate how the subsidies should be structured to assure the success of these new projects.

We're hoping that this week's questions relate directly to the experience of the majority of teachers and librarians who are taking part in the seminar. Please post this week if you have not had the time to contribute in previous weeks. By surveying individual participants we have come to the conclusion that our group represent over 2000 person-years of networking experience. This probably represents a greater level of networking expertise than was contained in the hundreds of industry-sponsored submissions to the FCC on the subject of Universal Service. Don't be shy about describing your part of this vast store of knowledge and experience. What you say might influence the direction of the Universal Service discussion so as not only to support the projects with which you have been involved, but to assure that similar projects will be able to flourish all across the country.

The purpose of the preceding set of questions is to try to tie up the discussions of the preceding four weeks in terms of their specific impact on the local classroom and library. Another sense in which we might try to tie up the various discussions we have heard in the seminar is to relate them to other proceedings currently before the FCC. Several seminar participants have made mention of these proceedings, which are likely to impact the FCC's implementation of Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act, which speaks of "advanced services" for schools and libraries.

The following list is taken from the FCC's Learnet Web page:

• Cable Reform

• Local Competition

• NII/SUPERNet (wireless)

I would like to thank the seminar participants for their dedicated attention to a broad and complex subject. The work that you have been doing in this seminar might well blaze the trail for a new form of citizen participation in the rule making process for federal and state governments. The task isn't easy, but rules such as those which will be implemented to assure Universal Service for schools and libraries are something that will affect us the rest of our lives. Whether we are working in classrooms or libraries, or whether we or our children make use of these facilities, I think that the effort we all put into this seminar is something we will be proud of as the Universal Service rules are promulgated and we see an enhancement of the networking efforts that so many seminar participants have pioneered. In some sense the Universal Service provisions of the Telecommunications Act serve to validate these pioneering efforts. By letting the Joint Board and the FCC hear of these efforts from people directly involved in them, we encourage the continuation of this work and the development of an extensive and effective telecommunications infrastructure for our nation's schools and libraries.

• Develop summaries of the Comments, Reply Comments and Further Comments in the On-line Repository. Send your summaries to library@info-ren.org so they can be linked into the Web site as part of the Participants' Contributions.

• Post to the on-line discussion group on this week's topic - the integration of new Universal Service subsidies with existing services and coordination of these subsidies with other proceedings before the FCC.

• Complete the wrap-up survey for the Universal Service/Network Democracy on-line seminar. This survey will be posted on the Universal Service/Network Democracy Web site early in the week.