Telecommunications Act
(TCA)

¹ The uni­ver­sal ser­vice li­censee shall provide one or more of the fol­low­ing ser­vices to meet de­mand in the area covered by the li­cence, in ac­cord­ance with the state of the art:⁵⁵

a.⁵⁶

a pub­lic tele­phone ser­vice, i.e. trans­mis­sion of speech in real time by means of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions tech­niques, in­clud­ing trans­mis­sion of data em­ploy­ing trans­fer rates com­pat­ible with the chan­nels for trans­mit­ting speech, as well as the con­nec­tion and ad­di­tion­al ser­vices;

b.

ac­cess to emer­gency call ser­vices;

c.

pub­lic pay tele­phones in suf­fi­cient num­bers;

d.⁵⁷

ac­cess to the Swiss dir­ect­or­ies of sub­scribers to the pub­lic tele­phone ser­vice; the Fed­er­al Coun­cil may re­quire a uni­ver­sal ser­vice li­censee to main­tain a dir­ect­ory of all cus­tom­ers of ser­vices of the uni­ver­sal ser­vice (gen­er­al dir­ect­ory);

e.⁵⁸

…⁵⁹

^1bis Ser­vices of the uni­ver­sal ser­vice must be en­sured in such a way that per­sons with dis­ab­il­it­ies are offered com­par­able terms and con­di­tions with re­spect to qual­ity, quant­ity and prices as those without dis­ab­il­it­ies. In this re­spect the uni­ver­sal ser­vice li­censee must en­sure in par­tic­u­lar that:

a.

pub­lic call boxes meet the re­quire­ments of the sens­ory im­paired and those with re­duced mo­bil­ity;

b.

a re­lay ser­vice is provided for the hear­ing im­paired;

c.

a dir­ect­ory en­quiry and op­er­at­or ser­vice is provided for the visu­ally im­paired.⁶⁰

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall fix the de­tailed rules for im­ple­ment­a­tion. It may lay down spe­cial pro­vi­sions for con­nec­tions out­side built-up areas. It may del­eg­ate its powers in this re­gard to the Fed­er­al De­part­ment of the En­vir­on­ment, Trans­port, En­ergy and Com­mu­nic­a­tions (DE­TEC).⁶¹

³ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall peri­od­ic­ally ad­apt the con­tent of the uni­ver­sal ser­vice in ac­cord­ance with the state of the art and so­cial and eco­nom­ic re­quire­ments.