ACE Friends: If Rural Telecom Topics are of interest to you. Tom ----------- UNIVERSAL SERVICE GUIDE The National Association of Development Organizations has updated its earlier guide that explains federal support systems for rural telecom. The guide offers some general ideas to steer local and state telecom advocacy and includes a list of resources. "Universal Service, Linking Communities to Opportunities," March 1999, $25; http://www.nado.org/; (202) 624-7806. RURAL TELECOM CONFERENCE SUMMARY The World Bank and the National Telephone Cooperative Association have posted the summaries of their recent, extensive conference on rural telecom. The summaries are fairly general, as is often the case in panel presentations with participants drawn from around the world. But the panels do address interesting topics such as bringing Internet access to jungle and desert areas in developing nations. Of great value is just having the list of the presenters and participating organizations. On-line at http://www.ntca.org/. RURAL INTERNET MERGERS UNDERWAY A former Wall Street investment banker has begun an aggressive campaign to purchase rural Internet providers. OneMain, named after a "Main Street" model, suddenly emerged in the news in the past two weeks for purchasing seventeen small town Internet services and raising almost $200 million in its first stock offering. The company intends to unify the local services and offer advertising suited to a rural audience whom they feel will be more likely to purchase products on-line than urban users. http://www.onemain.com/. --------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------- Tom Tate Economics and Community Systems Room 3901 South Bldg.,U.S.D.A Washington, DC 20250-0900 [log in to unmask] 202-720-2727 www.sba.gov/ace -------------------------------