Resumen
During the 1970's, long distance competition began to challenge the whole system of telephone monopoly and regulation. To defend themselves, telephone companies created a self-serving myth that universal household telephone penetration would never have existed without monopoly and regulatory subsidies. They also invented a legislative mandate for their subsidies by grasping at a few words in the preamble of the Communications Act. "Universal service" became the basis of the regulated telephone monopoly's claim for protection and legitimacy. In passing the 1996 Act, the Congress was unwittingly influenced by this mythology, and therefore, concentrated on preserving and extending subsidies. Ironically, the new "pro-competitive" law provides precisely the sort of language the defenders of regulated monopoly wanted to be read into the Communications Act 20 years ago, and is a kind of posthumous political victory for the old Bell System. The new universal service section represents the culmination of a policy debate that began in the 1970's. In order to fully understand the implications of the section and the debate surrounding it, it is essential to analyze the historical development of universal service policy. The authors discuss the observation that universal service policy has gone through two distinct generations.