Goals
The major goals of Universal Service as mandated by the 1996 Act are as follows:
- To promote the availability of quality services at just, reasonable, and affordable rates,
- To increase access to advanced telecommunications services throughout the Nation,
- To advance the availability of such services to all consumers, including those in low income, rural, insular, and high cost areas at rates that are reasonably comparable to those charged in urban areas,
- To increase access to telecommunications and advanced services in schools, libraries and rural health care facilities,
- To provide equitable and non-discriminatory contributions from all providers of telecommunications services to the fund supporting universal service programs.
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 states that all providers of telecommunications services should contribute to the federal universal service in a fair and nondiscriminatory manner; there should be specific, predictable, and sufficient Federal and State mechanisms to preserve and advance universal service; all schools, classrooms, health care providers, and libraries should have access to advanced telecommunications services; and lastly, that the Federal-State Joint Board and the Commission should determine those other principles that, consistent with the 1996 Act, are necessary to protect the public interest.
Read more about this topic: Universal Service Fund
Famous quotes containing the word goals:
“Our ego ideal is precious to us because it repairs a loss of our earlier childhood, the loss of our image of self as perfect and whole, the loss of a major portion of our infantile, limitless, ain’t-I-wonderful narcissism which we had to give up in the face of compelling reality. Modified and reshaped into ethical goals and moral standards and a vision of what at our finest we might be, our dream of perfection lives on—our lost narcissism lives on—in our ego ideal.”
—Judith Viorst (20th century)
“Despicable means used to achieve laudable goals renders the goals themselves despicable.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“We should stop looking to law to provide the final answer.... Law cannot save us from ourselves.... We have to go out and try to accomplish our goals and resolve disagreements by doing what we think is right. That energy and resourcefulness, not millions of legal cubicles, is what was great about America. Let judgment and personal conviction be important again.”
—Philip K. Howard, U.S. lawyer. The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America, pp. 186-87, Random House (1994)