Slashdot Mirror
Cable Modem Tax Proposed by FCC
TheSync writes "News.Com has an article by Declan McCullagh that says the FCC is considering a new tax of up to 9.1% on the revenue of cable modem providers. This is an expansion of the existing universal service fund, which currently does not apply to cable services. The USF could even be expanded to wireless IP and VOIP providers as well, expanding the fund to over $13 billion."
While you guys gripe about cable internet costing you ~$40, I'm still paying around $70 for my DSL (I count the phone line I have to buy and never use here).
I like this part of the article:
"One important point to note: If the FCC goes ahead with its proposal and cable users end up paying more in taxes, DSL users will end up paying less. Because more people will be contributing to the same $6 billion fund, under FCC procedures, each person's contribution gets reduced. So, while DSL taxes currently are 9.1 percent, that rate could fall substantially."
Can someone tell me what a FCC telephone usage tax has to do with rural health care? How does the FCC have any authorization to do that?
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
Well, I can't really say that this surprises me and as much as it may suck that my cable bill would go up, at least the money is going to some somewhat good causes.
Actually not.
My company serves rural midwestern markets (largest town is 8,000) exclusively. We receive no federal subsidy (why? we're not a incumbant local telco, or rural utility service, which most of the rules are structured to and were designed to keep younger companies absent subsidy). We do serve 1/6th of one state and should cover 1/3 in the next year. We're privately funded, profitable, and provide a service that nobody else can match in our markets (for a good price).
While the incumbant aka lethargic independent telcos and Qwest ignore these markets, we're there providing this important service. Their product? 128 Kbps DSL, fed by a single T1 for an entire community resulting in un-broadband (sub-200 Kbps). Ours is SLA'ed, 256 to 6 Mbps customer links standard in the product line. Private backbone, and 100 Mbps upstream. As usual, this private business has had the incentive to provide a better product at a lower price than the "fat, dumb and happy" incumbants. And no, we don't have a $5 million vacation house in Vail or a Gulfstream as part of our expense structure.
So what does the FCC propose? Tax us and our customers to put money in the pockets of the RBOCs and ILECs. To buy more Gulfstreams and vacation homes for the FDH. Oh, and to ensure greater political contributions from the incumbants (the real story here).
Just like a chapter out of Atlas Shrugged...
*scoove*
False.
Cable costs is really nothing. Maintaining and setting up the cable is a different matter. Truck roll and equipment costs suck. You're talking pole installation, running the wires. The increase in boosters/repeaters/gain equipment.
Hell, the health care and retirement benefits that the company gives to the employees that string up the wire is likely to cost more than the wire itself, esp. in relation to years in use. This is one of the reasons why electrical companies moved to automatic meter reading--they spent millions doing the transition, but will save millions from all the people they laid off since they don't have to worry about their pension plans.
People time costs lotsa dough.
Because of network effects. When you add a customer (either urban or rural) to the telephone network, the network becomes that much more functional for all customers, both urban and rural.
Did you ever consider that the investment needed to get phone service to "the rest of us" urban dwellers would never have been made (would never have made sense) without the promise of Universal Phone Service to make it also useful for rural dwellers.
It took the better part of century to convince businesses that enough people would have a telephone that it makes sense to have your business directly accessible by phone. How long did it take for everybody and his brother to have a web site? Seems to me like nobody had heard about the Internet prior to 1993, and everybody was on the web by 1998. Network effects.
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
Now, what was that you were about to say?
Only this. Taxation without representation. These taxes are not approved by Congress. They are determined and levied under the sole authority of the FCC. That is why they are referred to as a "stealth tax".
Furthermore, as I managed the implementation project for a major municipality's E-rate project, I can tell you that the 55% in question breaks down as follows:
All this was done "for the children". Within months of implementation, the system collapsed because of the lack of a maintenance staff. The function of the project was immaterial. Once paid for, it had accomplished what the politicians wanted it to do.
E-rate, like all gubmint programs I've ever known anything about, is a social edifice whose purpose it is to make money disappear into political payola and dirty back room deals. Yet another example of how it isn't the type of government that gets you, but its size.
To a certain extent, yes.
If your parents chose to invest your college fund in a dot-com and lost it all, you are penalized. If your parents chose to live a life of crime, you might have to grow up in a foster home with your chances in life somewhat stacked against you. If your parents chose to use contraceptives, you wouldn't be alive to start with.
I don't think it's possible to have every kid start off on the same footing, short of some truly draconian (and likely ill-fated) governmental meddling. Moving to a rural area is not nearly the only way parents can screw up their children's chances in life, in any case.