Section 1
SECTION 1. It is declared that in the interest of the social, economic and general well-being of the people, the State hereby adopts the following basic policies of the telephone industry: The attainment of efficient telephone service for as wide an area as possible at the lowest reasonable cost to the subscriber; The expansion of telephone service shall be financed through an optimal combination of domestic and foreign sources of financing and an optimal combination of debt and equity funds so as to minimize the aggregate cost of capital of telephone utilities; Consistent with the declared policy of the State to attain widespread ownership of public utilities, the capital requirements of telephone utilities obtained from ownership funds shall be raised from a broad base of investors, involving as large a number of individual investors as may be possible; In line with the objective of spreading ownership among a wide base of the people, the concept of telephone subscriber self-financing is hereby adopted whereby a telephone subscriber finances part of the capital investments in telephone installations through the purchase of stocks, whether common or preferred stock, of the telephone company; As part of any subscriber self-financing plan, when the issuance of preferred capital stock is contemplated, it is required that the subscriber be assured, in all cases of a fixed annual income from his investment and that these preferred capital stocks be convertible into common shares, after a reasonable period and under reasonable terms, at the option of the preferred stockholder; and In any subscriber self-financing plan, the amount of subscriber self-financing will, in no case, exceed fifty per centum (50%) of the cost of the installed telephone line, as may be determined from time to time by the regulatory bodies of the State.