roundtable: Re: telecomm legislation (fwd)

roundtable: Re: telecomm legislation (fwd)

Re: telecomm legislation (fwd)

Vigdor Schreibman - FINS (fins@access.digex.net)
Mon, 27 Mar 1995 05:37:15 -0500 (EST) 

Date: Mon, 27 Mar 1995 05:37:15 -0500 (EST)
From: Vigdor Schreibman - FINS <fins@access.digex.net>
To: roundtable@cni.org
Subject: Re: telecomm legislation (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <9503241644.AA01534@a.cni.org>
Message-Id: <Pine.SUN.3.91.950327051512.18855D-100000@access1.digex.net>


> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Thu, 23 Mar 1995 14:04:35 -0500
> From:iste@seas.gwu.edu
> To: Multiple recipients of list <ncctet@ivory.educom.edu>
> Subject: Re: telecomm legislation (fwd)
> 
> 
> From:  Dennis Bybee at ISTE USA National Office
> 
> AN AFFORDABLE SCHOOL ACCESS AMENDMENT WAS ****ADOPTED TODAY***** IN THE US
> SENATE COMMERCE COMMITTEE
> 
> The US Senate's Commerce Committee voted today to provide affordable 
> access to telecommunications and information services for elem/sec/post-
> secondary education institutions, libraries, and rural telemedicine 
> providers under the universal service provisions of Chairman Pressler's 
> "Telecommunications Competition and Deregulation Act of 1995."

  Under the Rockefeller amendment "all telecommunications carriers are 
required to provide universal service at rates not higher than the 
incremental cost to elementary schools, secondary schools, and libraries 
for telecommunications services that permit such schools and libraries 
to provide or receive educational services."  In addition, the FCC is 
required to "include the amount of the support payments reasonably 
necessary to provide universal service to public institutional 
telecommunications users to which this section applies in the universal 
service support mechanisms required under section 201(A) [of the 
amendment].

> Amendment was co-sponsored by Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and John D.
> Rockefeller IV (D-WV) and incorporated language for elementary and 
> secondary schools and classrooms offered to the committee by Senator 
> Bob Kerrey (D-NE).
> 
> The amendment passed by a narrow margin in the full committee's mark-up
> meeting.  The Committee's work today was characterized by Senator Kay 
> Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) as the "End of the Beginning" of this 
> legislative effort in this Congress.

The quote (of Winston Churchill) was by Sen. Snowe.

> Affordable school access provisions were encouraged and supported by the
> Federal Communications Commission and most national professional education
> groups including the American-based, K-12 International Society for
> Technology in Education (ISTE), the National School Boards Association
> (NSBA), and the National Education Association (NEA).
> 
> Affordable access to telecommunications and information services was one
> of the primary goals enumerated by the National Coordinating Council on
> Technology in Education and Training (NCC-TET) in its "NII:Requirements
> for Education and Training".
> 
> [NCC-TET contributed to this favorable Senate action by holding a
> telecommunications information forum on Capitol
> Hill 20 March 1995 where several attendees were engaged in passing out
> information after the meeting to Senate offices on the telecommunications
> needs of education and training institutions AND thru the INDEPENDENT
> actions of members whose awareness of this issue was heightended by
> information sharing at recent NCC-TET Legislative Committee meetings.]

  Vigdor Schreibman
  <fins@access.digex.net>

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