The Ofcom Consumer Panel - which is in fact independent of the regulator - has just published its response to the European Commission consultation on the scope of the universal service obligation. The Panel accepts that, under the current terms of the Universal Service Directive, neither mobile nor broadband should be included in the USO, but it make some interesting wider points as follows:

“… we would like to rise to the challenge posed in the first section of the Commission�s Communication, �to launch a broader policy debate on universal service provision� by inviting the Commission to think much more innovatively and imaginatively about �universal service� when it reviews the Directive in its entirety in 2006. Essentially the universal service concept in telecommunications is simply a carry-over from other utility industries like water, gas and electricity, but telecommunications is a much more differentiated service than these others.
The technology of telecommunications is developing much more rapidly than in these other industries, and the consumer and citizen implications of nonparticipation in the newer technologies and services have … profound implications for individual consumers and citizens and � because of the externalities of communications networks � society as a whole.

We suggest that the Commission consider a more sophisticated approach for telecommunications. Currently a service cannot even be considered for inclusion in the universal service obligation until it is already used by a majority of subscribers (see Articles 4.2 & 15). This is too slow and too blunt an approach for telecommunications. We would invite the Commission to think more flexibly about the benchmark for universal service in telecommunications, so that issues about connectivity and social exclusion can be considered alongside issues such as availability and take up.

As a consequence of this more flexible approach to �when� a universal service obligation might be triggered we would also suggest that the Commission should be prepared to have a full debate about what are the appropriate methods of funding the delivery of such an obligation.”