Gateway to Arunachal Pradesh

The Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) aims to provide for quality and affordable mobile and digital services across the rural and remote areas of the country; allowing non-discriminatory access to mobile and network services along with equitable access to knowledge and information dissemination, leading to rapid socio-economic development with improved standard of living.

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The Universal Service Obligation (USO) Fund is headed by the Administrator, USO Fund who is appointed by the Central Government, for the administration of the fund. It is an attached office of the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), Ministry of Communications.

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Genesis of Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF)

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The genesis of USOF is almost 200 years old, with the concept of Universal Service Obligation having been introduced by Rowland Hill in 1837 with his postal reforms. The postal reforms included uniform rates across the United Kingdoms (UK) and prepayment by sender via postage stamps. Universal Service was the key objective of the Universal Postal Union.

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In India, the Universal Service Obligation (USO) Fund was established initially with the fundamental objective of providing access to “Basic” telegraph services to people in remote and rural areas at affordable and reasonable prices. Subsequently, the Indian Telegraph (Amendment) Act, 2006 was notified on 29.12.2006 to repeal the term “Basic” wherein the scope of USO Fund was widened to provide access to telegraph services (including mobile services, broadband connectivity and ICT infrastructure creation) in rural and remote areas.

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