Wireless Providers to Pay Universal Service Fees?

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?)

Comments

just a bit more proof

[medcalf]

that taxation with representation isn't so hot, either.

Actually, it's worse than that. This is another form of taxing the unrepresented, since WISPs are unlikely to get the ear of Congress for a redress of grievances, when compared to the telcos who can spit out large amounts of bribes...er, subsidies...er, direct democracy to the Reps and Senators.

Universal broadband better?

[NanoGator]

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.

More value

[FurryFeet]

If the fee was applied to provide interner service to people who can't afford it, it would make sense. Also, it would (slightly) be an investment.
How? Well, there's an old story about how a long time ago, in a small town, there were only two phones: 001 was the Mayor's house, and 002 was the fire department. After a couple of months, the Mayor cancelled his line, since it was idiotic to pay $20 a month to be able to call just the fire department, wheter there was a fire or not.
The point being: If you have a phone, the value to you is increased as more people have one, since you have that many more potential people to contact. The same principle would apply to internet.
Sorry for the long rant. I'll shut up now.

Re:Wi-Fi

[wiredog]

Admittedly, there is no "right" to affordable food. Making sure that farmers can communicate and travel at low cost does provide the societal benefit of low food costs.

This if Fed's method of gaining control....

[Dr_Marvin_Monroe]

I don't think it's too much about the money that would be raised, since most small wireless operators are not making very much (if anything, some are free).....I see this really as a way of bringing groups like "Seattle Wireless" and others under governmental control.

By making every group subject to audits, federal fees and filings, every group can be identified and investigated as needed. That's their hook into you. Kinda like the IRS, where even if you don't make any money, you have to provide them with all of your information and "allow" them to verify it. There's no "opting-out" of the information game.

I've thought that it was just a matter of time before the government stepped in to regulate this....John Ashcroft can't have people communicating OUTSIDE the system!....How can he get Carnivore around this "wireless thing" if he can't force everyone to fill out forms and obey our regulations?

The RIAA & MPAA also can't have people communicating outside of ATT and AOL either, who would they sue in a distributed wireless city-net? They couldn't force anyone off the air through their DCMA takedown suits! Although, if you had to have a liscense.....they could take that!...and then force you off the air.....

The very idea that they would try to do this on an "unregulated" band shows what their intent is. I'd look for further attempts to limit power of WAP's, force a band change (making current units illegal by "out of band") and forcing some type of identification of base-stations. I could imagine some type of system where people would have to "activate" their base-stations by logging into the manufacturer site and giving some personal information or something like that.

The government's intent is to limit annonymous speech and communication between individuals....they can't do that if we keep jumping out of the cattle chutes that they've errected at all of the big ISP's....

Re:NO NO NO

[Ubergrendle]

Uh oh, not another IAMAEBSOOTV ("i am not an economist but saw one on tv"). Adam Smith had revolutionary ideas..for a couple of hundred years ago. If Smith nailed everything down so perfectly the first time, why bother having a field of economics now? I mean, everything can be simplified to pure laissez faire market capitalism, right??? Wrong. Unfrotunately there are lots of trends in open markets that defy explanation, or that require much more complex models to explain; things like anti-trust law exist for a good reason, as do keynsian economics, game theory, etc etc. For example, game theory indicates that competition is good, but a clear cut winner is not good.

YES YES YES

[jdcook]

"There is a market for DSL, wireless, and Cable. The government does not need to stick their foot into this market to make it work. As Adam Smith said, the 'invisible hand' will give these people their last mile connectivity."

I grant I haven't read all of Adam Smith, but I don't recall anything about "last mile connectivity." That was a joke.

"It IS NOT, repeat IS NOT governments job to force the economy into any position what so ever. If a company can figure out how to make these connections profitable they will, thanks to the 'invisible hand', and the company wins, the consumer wins, the economy wins, and it was all done without a negative effect. So how simple that works.

The government cannot help but "force the economy." It is, after all, a huge consumer. This demand helps shape the market. Now there is of course a difference between consuming pencils and gasoline and nuclear triggers on the one hand and planning an economy on the other. But the government has a role there too. The government's job should be to serve its citizenry. If that means that markets do not operate with maximal efficiency, who cares? "The market" is just an abstract concept, a tool that helps us understand how parts of the economy function. It is not something to be a slave to.

I do not understand this obsession of deeply ideological Libertarians with the capital-M Market. It seems as though it is their deity and that cost efficiency is the only axis on which they measure morality. The logical conclusion of such single mindedness is that if one cent more wealth, in aggregate, will be created by my gutting you like a fish, I am morally obligated to do it. Obviously (I trust and hope) this isn't what Libertarians really want but the most ideological ones don't seem to have any appreciation of nuance.

If no one can figure out a way to make last mile connections profitably, no one will build them. And no amount of "leave it to the market" mantra will change that. But if people want the connection, why shouldn't the government change the regulatory environment to make it profitable for companies to do so? This is just changing the ground rules for the market. Market forces themselves still exist. Is it possible that the government will do something so stupid that they will make things much worse? Of course. But they might also be able to make the change so that the effects aren't so bad. Does that mean that some person or company will incur costs that they wouldn't have otherwise? Yes it does. But again, so what? Money is not the only value. It is merely the easiest to calculate.