Universal Internet Access under an Ethical Lens

Abstract

Universal service is a long-standing tradition of telecommunications policy, designed to ensure that all citizens have access to affordable, quality telecommunications services regardless of geographic location and socioeconomic status. The origins of it are usually traced to the U.S. 1934 Communications Act and, also within the European Union, this principle was made explicit since the very first documents on the issue, as in the Green Book of 1995 or, even before, in the Council Resolution (93/C213/01) accepting the Commission guidelines for the liberalization of voice telecommunications (COM(93)159).