Universal Service in Action

Sen Ed Markey (D-MA) delivered the keynote address at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society's Telecom at 30: Universal Service as the North Star event on March 5. In his remarks, Sen Markey highlighted three continuing gaps in universal service: broadband affordability, digital opportunity, and ensuring equal access to emerging technologies, like artificial intelligence. "The Telecommunications Act was grounded in a simple but powerful idea that communications policy should expand opportunity," said Sen Markey. "The world that the Telecommunications Act helped create is evolving rapidly...Thirty years ago, the central challenge was connecting Americans to the internet. Today, the challenge is ensuring that the next generation of digital infrastructure expands opportunity rather than deepening inequality."