Universal Service Obligation

[Michael Biber]

Linker,
Is there anything in an USO declaration that says that the service should be
provided at a reasonable (affordable?) price?

I suspect many people are baulking at $60/month for OnRamp (plus say
$50/month for the ISP's ISDN service) versus a business line costing
$20/month and a standard residential service...$11.65. For what? Although
digital, etc. only about twice the connect speed.

I don't believe ISDN will take off until it stops being priced as a premium
service (even though it is).

IMHO, regards,

Mike Biber

Asia Pacific Networx
L4, 491 Kent Street Sydney NSW 2000 Australia
PH: +61 2 9564 6866      FX: +61 2 9564 2179
EM: mbiber@apnetworx.com.au
W3: http://www.apnetworx.com.au


-----Original Message-----
From: Tony Barry <tonyb@netinfo.com.au>
To: link@www.anu.edu.au <link@www.anu.edu.au>
Date: Wednesday, 19 August 1998 14:32
Subject: Universal Service Obligation


<Snipped>
>Linkers
>
>In summary the press release below says -
>
>        ISDN or broadly comparable 64 kbps digital data services
>        will be accessible to all people in Australia by the end of
>        1998 through Telstra meeting its licence condition and its
>        proposed satellite based delivery system
>
>        any further Government intervention in relation to the
>        provision of a 64 kbps digital data service is not
>        economically necessary or justifiable the costs of mandating
>        an ISDN service providing a 64 kbps digital data channel as
>        part of the Universal Service Obligation would outweigh the
>        benefits
>