Editing Universal service (section)

===Communications Act of 1934===
{{main|Communications Act of 1934}}

Universal service in telecommunications was eventually established as U.S. national policy by the preamble of the [[Communications Act of 1934]], whose preamble declared its purpose as “to make available, so far as possible, to all the people of the United States, a rapid, efficient, Nationwide, and world-wide wire and radio communication service with adequate facilities at reasonable charges”.<ref>{{USPL|73|416}}</ref><ref>{{UnitedStatesCode|47|151}}</ref>  The chief purpose of this law was to combine the [[Federal Radio Commission]] with the ICC's wire communications powers, including regulation of AT&T, into a new [[Federal Communications Commission]] with greater powers over both radio and wire communications. The language of the 1934 Communications Act was later re-interpreted to mean a commitment for telephone companies to provide service to all people, but historically this language was aimed at the more limited goal of unifying the United States' fragmentary telephone exchanges into a single universal system.<ref>{{cite journal | last=Mueller | first=Milton | title=Universal service and the telecommunications act: myth made law | journal=Communications of the ACM | volume=40 | issue=3 | date=1997 | issn=0001-0782 | doi=10.1145/245108.245119 | pages=39–47|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171111094633/http://spears.okstate.edu/home/graycg/tcom5173/Documents/Mueller-UniversalService.pdf|archive-date=2017-11-11|url-status=dead|url=http://spears.okstate.edu/home/graycg/tcom5173/Documents/Mueller-UniversalService.pdf}}</ref>

To comply with the act, AT&T began increasing the price of long-distance service to pay for universal service. The act also established the FCC to oversee all non-governmental broadcasting, interstate communications, as well as international communication which originate or terminate in the United States.