From universal service to universal connectivity

Mani and shapur a universal faith for e universal kingdom

Running Head: Universal Service

By surveying the universal service policies in six Latin American countries, this study explores the evolution of the concept during the rollout of the telecommunication reform in the last decade. Country profiles and a set of universal service indicators provide a frame for discussing issues of accessibility and affordability of telephone service in the region. This study found that the reconf...

Competitively Neutral Universal Service

Universal service obligations impose specific costs on the universal service provider. The measure of these costs and their financing have been studied along two complementary lines of reasoning: is the universal service obligation sustainable? Who should bear its costs? Most often, a two-step procedure is put forward. In a first step the cost of USO must be assessed; in a second step the USP m...

Mobile Challenges: From Universal Access to Universal Participation

Mobile technologies and services offer new opportunities for eAccessibility and aParticipation. In this position paper we present three on-going projects addressing mobile user collaboration and participation, where the target groups range from physically disabled persons to neighborhood citizens. We then discuss some selected challenges in mobile eParticipation, regarding both ICT research and...

The 'state' of universal service

The introduction of competition forces regulators to address the historical practice of using of implicit cross subsidies to maintain uniformly low local telephone service rates. The Federal Communications Commission recently adopted rules to remove a portion of these implicit subsidies by adopting an explicit universal service program. This program, however, only addresses a small portion of t...