USO Agreements

GUIDELINES FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF UNIVERSAL SERVICE SUPPORT.

The New Telecom Policy 1999 envisaged provision of access to basic telecom services to all at affordable and reasonable prices. The resources for meeting the Universal Service Obligation (USO) shall be generated through a Universal Service Levy (USL) at a prescribed percentage of the revenue earned by the operators holding different type of licenses. Further, the New Telecom Policy 1999 envisaged implementation of Universal Service Obligation for rural and remote areas through all Basic service providers who will be reimbursed from the funds collected by way of USL. Other service providers shall also be allowed to participate in USO provisioning subject to technical feasibility and shall be similarly reimbursed out of the funds of USL.

The Universal Service Support has been started from the financial year 2002-03 based on the following guidelines.

	The funds created by the USL shall be spent in rural and remote areas on both the public access telephones or community telephones meant for public use and individual household telephones in net high cost rural/remote areas.
	The support from Universal Service Fund will be provided to meet Net Cost (i.e. cost minus revenue) of providing the Universal service.
	In the event of an increase in the requirement of Universal Service Obligation, the percentage of contribution towards USL can be raised to meet such additional requirement but the added levy will be drawn out of the prevalent percentage of license fee for keeping the ceiling intact and as such, will not cause any additional burden either on the service providers or the consumers.
	The implementation of the USO is divided into the following two streams.