To say the least, the jury is still out on whether a network connection will help alleviate the unattractive consequences of information poverty. In other words, the answer to the queston of whether a network connection might help to alleviate the unattractive consequences of information poverty is-maybe sometimes. For the proponents of universal service, this answer is something less than convincing in terms of a reason for ignoring costs of implementation in order to guarantee acess to advanced technologies for everyone. Mueller point out that telephone penetration had reachedover 80 percent of households in the U.S. before the universal services subsidies were implemented in the mid 1960s. It was this period marked by fierce comptetion that planted the seeds for universal telephone service, which was then achieved in spite of government intervention, not because of it.
Interconnection is a very different matter from subsidization.
Regulations can play a critically helpful role in furthering diffusion of the network. Although it may not be economically efficient for a large provider to offer service in a given area, easy interconnection would allow a smaller provider to offer the same level and numer of services to regions and neighborhoods ignored by the mega-carriers. Easy interconnection would ensure that traffic would flow seamlessly among all the various providers. Given the history of how this country achieved one of the highest telephone penetraton rates in the world and the questions regarding the real benefits of network connections, any universal service provsion or other network interconnection rules that work against the efficient operation of the market for data traffic ought to be highly suspect. But the second 'if'is particularly a big one.