In-House Counsel

Turning Universal Service Funds into Agents of Change

While research has shown conclusively that competition among service providers and diversity in technology platforms for connectivity are a major driver for telecom penetration, it would probably take a long time for the market to create enough commercial incentives to bring connectivity to high cost remote regions and low income households.

The stakes are too high and the economic and social opportunity is huge to wait for the market to bring connectivity to all. The Universal Service Funds (USFs) will play a critical role to help governments address this challenge. I want to invite Governments around the world to move with an extreme sense of urgency to turn these ?sleepers? into agents of change.

Before the opening of competition the funding and allocation of USF was straightforward. One telecom supplier funded either by cross subsidies between difference services or government funds supported the program to provide fixed telephony service to high cost remote locations and low income households. This model continued to exist for many years with modest results in many markets, as evidenced by the poor growth in fixed line telephony penetration rates.

Full post as published by Cisco High Tech Policy Blog on February 09, 2009 (boomark / email).