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:
“Let us beware of saying there are laws in nature. There are only necessities: there is no one to command, no one to obey, no one to transgress. When you realize there are no goals or objectives, then you realize, too, that there is no chance: for only in a world of objectives does the word “chance” have any meaning.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Despicable means used to achieve laudable goals renders the goals themselves despicable.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“Artists have a double relationship towards nature: they are her master and her slave at the same time. They are her slave in so far as they must work with means of this world so as to be understood; her master in so far as they subject these means to their higher goals and make them subservient to them.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)