Legal Regulation Of The Telecommunications Universal Service

As the Information Revolution has increasing impact around the globe, the issues of who has access these technologies has great importance. Connection to these networks and services influence a people's access to job, education, health care and mil participation as a citizen. So a critical element of most national telecom policy objectives is advancing universal service.This paper is composed of three parts with over 35,000 characters.The first part of the paper gives an overview of legal practices and issues about telecom universal services in various counties. According to ITU, the definition of universal services is to making available telecom services of specified quality at an affordable price to potential users who do not have the service and for whom not having access to the service. The legal regulation about universal service focus on two things: Which services to extend?_--universal service objectives; How to provide the service?-universal service mechanism. Hie object of universal service is a dynamic concept with a set of moving target, varying with the level of network development and advances in telecom technologies and services. For developed countries, universal service means "telephone in every home", especially to ensure telecom services available to minority (such as people with disability), universal service in these countries is go beyond basic telephone service and to include a variety of other advanced services such as Internet accessing. Developing countries focus on universal access rather than universal service. It means all individuals having reasonable access to a telephone that they can use. Historically, universal service has been commonly pursued through heavy regulation of the monopolist and a system of cross-subsidies, such as long distance subsidies local service, urban service subsidies rural service. But technological changes and market deregulation over the last two decades have undermined the cross-subsidies. One approach is to impose Universal Service Obligation as license conditions on private or government service providers. Another approach is an access mechanism, paid as interconnection charges by long-distance operators seeking access to the local loop. The most favorable alternative is to establish a universalfund (USF), which collects funds from different sources and pays universal service operators the eligible net costs of the service.The second part of the paper studies the implications of liberalized Telecommunications trade in the WTO on universal service policy. Providing international telecom services requires interconnection with other countries' public network. The most significant roadblock to such access is many of the domestic telecommunications infrastructures are owned and operated by governments. It is necessary to negotiate Basic Telecommunications Service to eliminate such barriers. However, a common reason cited for failure liberalized the telecommunications sector is that some goals of universal services, such as providing basic telephone services to rural or low-income arrears, would not be met in a fully-competitive environment. In line with a government's right to regulate its domestic universal service policy, it needs to put certain limitations on its obligations under WTO agreements on basic telecommunications services. The paper explores the relationships between universal service policy and exceptions of GATS/Annex on Telecommunications /the Reference paper. According to such exceptions, the Member can defines its own objectives for universal service, and to take action to implement such a program, and the action will not be considered anticompetitive, as long as it is administered in a neutral ,transparent, nondiscriminatory manner. It should be noted that Cross-subsidies is precisely forbidden by the Reference paper.Part three mainly debates how to set up the legal system for telecommunications universal service in China. This part explores the evolution of telecommunications universal service policy of China in the last tw...