Editing Universal service (section)

==Providing service to all (1970s-present)==
Historians of AT&T tend to hold that the modern concept of "Universal Service" has been essentially the same since the firm's foundation.<ref>{{cite book | last=Pool | first=Ithiel de Sola |author-link=Ithiel de Sola Pool| title=The Social Impact of the Telephone | publisher=Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press | publication-place=Cambridge, Mass. | date=1977 | isbn=978-0-262-16066-7 | page=}}</ref> While agreeing that Vail's coining of the term was clearly influential, other scholars have pointed to a significant shift in meaning connected to the [[Breakup of the Bell System]] where the meaning of "Universal Service" became less focused less on interconnection, and more on providing service to all.<ref>{{cite journal | last=John | first=Richard R. | title=Theodore N. Vail and the Civic Origins of Universal Service | journal=Business and Economic History | publisher=Cambridge University Press | volume=28 | issue=2 | year=1999 | issn=0894-6825 | jstor=23703321 | pages=71–81 | doi=10.7916/D8T74118 | access-date=2024-09-21|url=https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/D8T74118}}</ref>

The 1975 report to congress by [[Eugene V. Rostow]] on behalf of [[AT&T]] was influential in offering a reinterpretation of the 1934 communications Act as defending the benefits of monopoly: not duplicating infrastructure and providing service to all.<ref>{{cite journal | last=Mueller | first=Milton | title=Universal service in telephone history | journal=Telecommunications Policy | publisher=Elsevier BV | volume=17 | issue=5 | year=1993 | issn=0308-5961 | doi=10.1016/0308-5961(93)90050-d | pages=352–369|url=https://business.columbia.edu/sites/default/files-efs/imce-uploads/CITI/Working%20Papers/Working%20Papers%20U/Universal%20Service%20in%20Telephone%20History%20A%20Reconstruction.pdf}}</ref><ref>{{cite thesis|type=PhD| author=Joanne D. Eustis|title=AGENDA-SETTING THE UNIVERSAL SERVICE CASE | url=https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/6babe75e-763e-4234-a825-3c4fc620a7ba/content | page=95|access-date=2024-09-15|date=2000-04-07|publisher=Virginia Tech}}</ref> The [[Bell System divestiture]] of 1984 dissolved the monopoly that inspired "Universal Service" and the FCC began to abandon rate regulation.

Universal service, in the sense of aspiring to provide service to all was more explicitly codified by the [[Telecommunications Act of 1996]],<ref>[https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/254- 47 U.S.C. § 254] Cornell University Law Library</ref> even as it permitted expanded competition in the telecommunications field. The [[Federal Communications Commission]] is actively exploring universal service reform, and the place of universal service to the broadband communications environment.<ref>[http://www.fcc.gov/wcb/tapd/universal_service/ FCC: Universal Service]</ref>