From: Ruth Holder To: Multiple recipients of list COMMUNET Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 16:16:38 -0400 Subject: Urging An Advanced Universal Service Goal Dear 'Net Friends, I'd like to share with you the Alliance for Public Technology's letter to the House Commerce Committee (attached below). The current House telecommunications reform legislation (H.R. 1555) does not contain a national policy goal for universal service in the information age, and we urge that one be included. If you'd like to add your voice to ours, please contact me directly (holder@apt.org). APT's "Principles to Implement the Goal of Advanced Universal Service," referenced in our letter, are available on APT's Web/Gopher/FTP server (the URLs are in my signature file). We welcome your comments and support. Thanks! Take care, Ruth Ruth Holder Alliance for Public Technology (APT) | Internet: holder@apt.org 901 15th St. NW #230 | 202/408-1403 (voice/TTY) Washington, DC 20005 | 202/408-1134 (fax) For more online information about the Alliance for Public Technology: http://apt.org/apt.html gopher://apt.org:1600 ftp://apt.org/pub/Alliance_for_Public_Technology_APT May 12, 1995 The Honorable Thomas Bliley U.S. House of Representatives 2241 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, DC 20515-4607 The Honorable John D. Dingell U.S. House of Representatives 2328 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, DC 20515-2216 The Honorable Jack Fields U.S. House of Representatives 2228 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, DC 20515-4308 Dear Congressmen Bliley, Dingell and Fields: The Alliance for Public Technology (APT) appreciates your leadership in crafting legislation to encourage the rapid deployment of new telecommunications technologies. We applaud your efforts to get major telecommunications reform legislation through this year. Without national legislation, serial deregulation of telecommunications will continue in the courts, which we believe does not well serve the consumer. APT strongly believes that a clearly articulated national goal of advanced universal service must be included just as it was in H.R. 3636 last year. We recommend a universal service goal to promote and encourage the availability of a high capacity, switched telecommunications network that will enable all the people of the United States, regardless of location or disability, to originate and receive affordable and accessible high quality voice, data, graphics, video and other types of telecommunications services. We urge you to please include this language in H.R. 1555 so that it reflects your own efforts last year and mirrors the goal language in the Pressler bill (S. 652) this year. The incorporation of such a goal in your bill is essential to ensure that every community and residence in the United States can look forward to ultimate connection to the "information superhighway," that information providers are clear that ultimately their products will reach a national audience, and that specific minority and other groups of individuals can be assured that it is not national policy to enable them to be "redlined" off of the superhighway. APT is a grassroots membership organization of about 300 individuals and nonprofit organizations. It is dedicated to ensuring consumer access to the benefits of advanced telecommunications services which the new information technologies make possible. To this end, we have recently issued the attached "Principles to Implement the Goal of Advanced Universal Service." APT recognizes that H.R. 1555 seeks to balance a set of highly complex and divergent interests, and we are anxious to work with you in achieving that balance. Passage of telecommunications reform legislation this year is in the best interest of the entire nation. Please call on us if we can be of any assistance. Sincerely, Barbara O'Connor, Chair Mary Gardiner Jones, Presiden