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Wireless Providers to Pay Universal Service Fees?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the wireless-but-not-taxless dept.

andyo writes "Mailing lists are abuzz with the news that wireless Internet providers may have to pay fees to support plain old telephone service. My own perspective is at the O'Reilly Network." The Universal Service Fees are taxes set up long ago to assure that telephone service was provided to everyone, even people who it would normally be uneconomical to serve. The theory is a good one, the execution maybe not. (Maybe if the fees went towards Universal Broadband?)

1 of 172 comments (clear)

  1. Universal broadband better? by NanoGator · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I was reading the other day that during disasters email tends to work a lot better than the phone. In Bellevue Washington, they're talking about deploying wireless devices to disaster workers. Here's the article:

    http://www.komotv.com/news/story_m.asp?ID=17879

    I can't help but think that this would be a better service to keep running than POTS with the money. Text messages are so much easier to get through than voice.

    --
    "Derp de derp."