The origins of universal service: History as a determinant of telecommunications policy

Abstract

Nations often seek to import policies from others they believe to have achieved the goals they wish to achieve. This has been especially true of universal telephone service. But how the telephone was introduced and developed in the United States and its regulatory structure was an outcome of a set of historical circumstances, unique to the United States. History, to a great extent, determined that the telephone system be an entrepreneural enterprise and that even in this era of regulatory relaxation and reform, the goal of universal service persists.