Finland makes broadband access a legal right

Fri Jul 2 14:51:13 UTC 2010

On Jul 2, 2010, at 10:33 AM, Holmes,David A wrote:

> Does a "... certain inventor of the Internet ..." refer to the High
> Performance and Communications Act of 1991, also known as the "Gore
> Act"? The 1991 Act, based on a study by Dr. Leonard Kleinrock  
> ("Towards
> a National Research Network") created the commercial Internet that we
> know and work with today.
>

I don't know, but I do know that Larry Pressler was the sole sponsor  
of the  Telecommunications Act of 1996, which is where E-rate came  
from. This was when the Republicans controlled both houses of  
Congress, and as far as I know Senator Gore had nothing to do with  
this bill; he didn't even offer any amendments.

None of this is helping me configure any routers, so I am going to  
shut up about this now.

Regards
Marshall

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sean Donelan [mailto:sean at donelan.com]
> Sent: Friday, July 02, 2010 7:22 AM
> To: nanog at nanog.org
> Subject: Re: Finland makes broadband access a legal right
>
> On Thu, 1 Jul 2010, William Herrin wrote:
>> On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 8:04 AM, Gadi Evron <ge at linuxbox.org> wrote:
>>>
> http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/web/07/01/finland.broadband/index.html?
> hpt=T2
>>
>> In the US, the Communications Act of 1934 brought about the creation
>> of the "Universal Service Fund." The idea, more or less, was that
>
> The Universal Service Fund was created as a result of the Bell  
> divesture
>
> in 1984; and extended by the Telecommunications Act of 1996.  It  
> didn't
> exist before then.  There was the Kingsbury Agreement in 1913 (One
> System, One Policy, Universal Service), but universal service didn't
> mean
> the same thing.  Universal service meant if you had a phone, it could
> call
> any other phone; but there wasn't a goal of a phone in every house  
> until
> the 1960s.
>
>> every phone line customer contributed to the fund (you'll find it
>> itemized on your phone bill) and the phone companies had to charge  
>> the
>> same for every phone line regardless of where delivered in their
>> territory but when initially installing an unusually difficult
>> (expensive) phone line the phone company was entitled to reimburse  
>> its
>> cost from the fund.
>
> As part of the natural monopoly, there was a system of rate averaging
> and
> settlements.  But there was often radically different prices based on
> public policy goals, for example business phone users paid more and
> residential phone users paid less.  Long distance prices were kept  
> high
> in order to keep monthly residential bills low.  Its very difficult to
> maintain public policy price differentials in a competitive  
> environment;
>
> but it was also difficult to maintain those prices even in a monopoly
> environment.
>
> The early ARPANET/Internet indirectly benefited from some of those
> public
> policy pricing decisions in the US.
>
>> In 1996 a certain inventor of the Internet decided that the universal
>> service fund needed to pay for PCs in rural schools (the "E-Rate"
>> program) instead of improving rural communications...
>
> The 1996 Universal Service Fund also expanded who paid into the fund.
> If
> the Universal Service Fund is expanded again to pay for "broadband,"  
> the
>
> biggest question is how will the "contribution base" be expanded to  
> pay
> for it?
>
>
>