| This exploratory and descriptive research compares the policy-making processes and policy recommendations regarding universal service and universal access developed by the U.S. National Information Infrastructure Advisory Council (NIIAC), the Canadian Information Highway Advisory Council (IHAC), and related federal government agencies. Created in 1993 and 1994, respectively, the Councils were charged with “bringing forward” the concepts of universal service and universal access to adjust to the effects of deregulation, new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), and neo-liberal economic competition that included acknowledging the private sector as the primary creator of the Information Highway. Both Councils were informed by the history, narrative, and discourse pertaining to the concept of universal service and telephony; they received submissions from the public, private, and NGO sectors and individuals; both Councils delivered policy recommendations to their respective governments, pointing to traditional information and public access institutions such as libraries, schools, and hospitals as the most feasible points to begin to guarantee access to the Information Highway. As its primary data this study relied on the Councils' preparatory briefing documents and their final reports as well as interviews with Council members and government agency and NGO members. This qualitative study used as its methodology organizational, policy, narrative, and discourse analyses to create a critique of what universal service and universal access were and what they became in the NIIAC, IHAC process. The research showed that the U.S. had started with a more clearly defined universal service tradition than Canada, and undertook a more complex, broad-based policy-making process with more experienced personnel. It was also clear that IHAC had in many ways adopted the U.S. model and arrived at many similar recommendations as NIIAC. Because of the inevitability of technical, economic, and social change related to the Information Highway, no definitive outcome to the universal service and universal access “story” can be determined. Because the Canadian government did not follow up on some of IHAC's most crucial recommendations, the Information Highway “story” in Canada has been left less complete and less clear than in the U.S. |
