NOTAS: | "A universal service obligation (USO) ensures that basic services are available at an affordable price to all households and businesses. For many countries, functional Internet access has been included in universal service obligations for some time. However, this has usually been defined as basic dial-up speeds, but as demand for greater data volumes increases and with improvements in average connection speeds, there is the argument to introduce a broadband USO, which better reflects today’s technological capabilities. Several countries have already embarked on defining and implementing a universal service for broadband in an effort to reduce the digital divide. However, there remain variations in the broadband speed targets that have been adopted, which are fairly low, ranging from 1Mbps to a potential 30Mbps." |