Seniors Deserve Affordable, Reliable Telecom Choices

All Americans deserve a communications system ensuring that essential telecom services are universally available, competitively priced and delivered on a strong, reliable network.

The more companies compete for your business, the more choices consumers have. Competition means lower prices—and without competition, prices go up.

Regulatory control of the telecom marketplace helps keep the average American's phone bill from escalating. All communication companies need to be able to compete freely and fairly for your service—and to compete, they regulated telecom laws to protect smaller businesses from predatory practices from larger companies.

A policy that ensures all companies compete according to the same rules would speed investment, innovation and value that benefits senior citizens, including:

• Ensuring Affordable Access to a Dial Tone—Preserving basic telephone service for seniors living on a fixed-income and rural health care facilities by requiring all telecom providers to commit to stabilizing universal service.
• Safeguarding Vital Social Objectives—Ensuring all telecommunications providers support the same core priorities, such as access for persons with disabilities, 911 and other public safety needs.
• Speeding New Choices, Services and Value to Our Communities—Accelerating the arrival of diverse voice, video and Internet options, often bundled together at a discount.
• Expanding Telemedicine and Lifelong Learning Opportunities—Ranging from online classes to promising new breakthroughs in telemedicine, which can offer new hope and comfort to homebound patients and seniors living in rural areas, where specialists may work many miles away.