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FCC Moves To Convert Phone Fund To Broadband Fund
medv4380 writes "The Federal Communications Commission is expected to change the Universal Service Fund so that the funds are directed toward broadband infrastructure instead of rural phone infrastructure. '... while the world has changed around it, USF – in too many ways – has stood still, and even moved backwards. The program is still designed to support traditional telephone service. It’s a 20th century program poorly suited for the challenges of a 21st century world.' You can see a transcript of what was presented to the FCC (PDF) online."
USF is used to provide phone service at the same price for everyone anywhere even if it costs the phone company to provide the service. Anyone anywhere in rural area can get phone service at the same price. Does this mean the same will happen to broadband?
Most telcos (Cable or DSL) already collect these fees now. We don't have to charge for USF as a broadband (WISP) provider. They may force all broadband providers to collect these fess now. Won't have much effect on the vast majority of users.
They've been collecting the fee since 1934 on telephones.
Until now it was going towards telephones in rural areas, now it'll go to internet infrastructure.
Giving funds to telecom companies always turns out productively, right?
Just like your gas tax goes god knows where these days too.
I have mixed feelings about this.
Propping up POTS is probably a bad idea. There seems to be little future there.
I suspect it costs no more to string fiber to small towns and then put up a cell tower.
Or maybe buy small sat dishes and a a cell tower in small towns.
Or put in the broadband and offer a free femtocells in really rural places.
Still I expect the fund just got ripped off for some other use. Perhaps it should just
be repealed and they can sell us a whole new solution with new legislation.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Okay, that's step one. Now how about collecting the USF from cable companies the same as telcos? Or treating broadband providers as common carriers?
The federal fund, known as the Universal Service Fund, comes from a line-item charge for phone customers, usually about $2 a month. That money goes toward building and maintaining copper-wire phone connections to remote areas that would be too costly to serve otherwise. The subsidy was created by the 1934 Communications Act, and regulators today say the fund needs to be used for high-speed Internet connections as people increasingly rely on the Web to gather information and communicate.
So, instead of paying $2 a month, so that yokels in the boonies can call each other and gossip, all them them city folks will now pay $20 a month, to subsidize broadband for folks who live on in the boonies can download porn to their ranches!?!?
[Checks Slashdot name] . . . Oh, wait, maybe it is a good idea to subsidize folks who live on ranches in the boonies.
Although, I read an article in The Economist about UNESCO: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNESCO#Controversy_and_reform . The article said that half of the UNESCO budget never made in out of Paris, France, where the headquarters are located. I thought that was pretty amusing, until I was on a business trip in Geneva. Then we went out for lunch and waiter asked us if we worked for the UN (which was just down the road). When we said no, he treated us like unwanted, unwashed infidels. We noticed that the UN folks there were chowing down on kings' portions of food, and just got a bill for their meals, which the UN would pay for. Well, who pays the budget for the UN . . . ?
This is another trick in politics: Get someone else to pay for what you consume. When this FCC "reform" passes into law, I would be interested to see where all those dollars were being spent. But, alas, politicians do their best to avoid transparency . . .
Oh, well.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
For us here in Alaska, cheaper to run fiber around the state in the sea and then push data out over fiber and then wireless to the last mile.
Hopefully this will mean a rollout of DSL in remote locations. DSL actually is the best way to bring internet to rural areas, as most of the cable is already laid, all that needs to be done is to install some signal regeneration/loop extender equipment. Fiber optics can also be brought to a node part of the way, but the amount of cable that needs to be replaced is still less. It is amazing the bandwidh that can be seen with newer DSL modems, its enough to even carry video. Its amazing what can be squeezed out of a twisted pair.
Maybe cheaper if near the sea, but Alascom (remember them?), AT&T, and then GCI have a boat load of those little dishes and Microwave in the interior.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
So let me get this straight. Congress back in 1934 passes a bill to fund rural phone lines by charging city slickers an extra tax on their phone bill.
Now 70 years later the FTC decides on its own that it can levy any tax it wants to against anyone it wants to and put the money towards any program it so desires.
Does Congress' power to tax and make law have little meaning anymore? Is our form of government becoming one in which bureaucrats decide for themselves what taxes to levy and what laws to create?
I'm hoping at least a few people on SlashDot recognize the types of precedents that have been set over the last several years in how it undermines the intentional separation of powers in the US Constitution. It's more insidious and the long-term consequences more dire than I'm sure most people here realize.
Fuel taxes pay for the roads. They are the largest source of highway funding...
Agreed. Are they going to have rural people subsidize my higher housing costs in the city? What about my higher car insurance rates?
There is already "Universal Access" via satellite. It may be comparatively slow and expensive -- too bad. If you want a lovely night sky and lots of trees - go live in the country. If you want fast internet and Thai food delivered to your front door - live in the city.
Live where you want to live - but don't make me pay for its shortfalls.
They are directing Federal funding to broadband services. Federal funding is a fun thing. It comes with all sorts of stipulations.
Start reading on Page 11:
http://financecommission.dot.gov/Documents/Tax%20Foundation%20paper%20on%20Gas%20Tax.pdf
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
You realize the V.A.T. is in place of sales tax, not in addition to it, right? And that to the end consumer it looks basically identical? And that taxing the difference between input and output costs is actually more economically forgiving to struggling businesses than taxing everything overall, despite losses?
The ______ Agenda
Thing is in the US is Sales taxes are imposed at the state and local levels (county/city). This is much like how each country in Europe set's its own VAT tax rate. From what I've read about proposed VAT taxes in the US is that it would be another tax levied in addition to other taxes, not replacing a sales tax or income tax.
This would be like the EU coming and dictating that every transaction in the EU would include an additional x% in VAT collected and sent to Brussels to be used by the Parliament to fund EU projects. (I know not exactly how it works, but...)
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Not only that but with control of the last mile in the hands of a couple of corps and cherry picking many rural places get no choice or outrageous prices.
A friend tried to service his area by talking his boss into going in on a T-1 and subletting use, but the local teleco (who only offers $60 a month dialup to those not in town) found out and pulled his access to the backbone, with a "just try and sue us" nasty letter to boot. His lawyer said "sure you'll win, but it'll cost a million and a half and a decade in court and they KNOW you can't afford it" so now those folks are still stuck on dialup because the teleco refuses to upgrade their lines or add any DSLAMs and they and the local cableco haven't moved an inch in ANY direction in nearly 20 years here.
So I'm ALL for it. Use that money to lay broadband from coast to coast, and then let the monopolies compete. If they want to be the only provider in an area? Well then they better lay down 50Mbps fiber before we get there and offer fair prices. Because as it is in rural areas like I'm in there is very little service, the service offered is crazy priced, which keeps the poor from having any access, and it is just gouging all around. i mean $67 for DSL, and $103 for basic cable (which they won't unbundle so you HAVE to take it) with Internet? Talk about price gouging!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Why is it my problem that they aren't willing to pay the market price for broadband?
They help provide food for you and your friends.
One of the reasons why a civilization becomes "wealthy" is when one farmer can feed hundreds or even thousands.
That means those hundreds or thousands can do other things (make phones, be hair stylists, write Internet RFCs etc). Otherwise they'd all be fishing/hunting/farming to put enough food on the table.
You could of course outsource food supply to other countries. But from a big picture POV that's just sweeping it under someone else's carpet.
Of course the flip side is with all this specialization, civilization becomes a lot more fragile in some ways.
>>>Propping up POTS is probably a bad idea..... string fiber to small towns and then put up a cell tower.
Short-sighted thinking. Cell towers are limited to only ONE spectrum, which has to be shared with other services like shortwave, AM, FM, TV, emergency radio, and so on. Cellular internet has limited growth potential.
In contrast, wired internet has unlimited spectrum. Every time you lay a wire, you get a whole new spectrum from 0 to ~100 gigahertz. It is much wiser to build the internet on Wires rather than wireless.
And since it's using the existing infrastructure (copper), upgrading POTS to DSL will save billions of dollars in less labor cost.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
>>>one farmer can feed hundreds or even thousands.
Actually 99% of american food doesn't come from farmers. It is mass-produced in megacorp factories just like all our other products. So when you say you want to subsidize the rural community, you're really subsidizing the employees of that factory, or the local walmart, or mcDonalds. Not farmers.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Sure, it's road related if building a whaling museum encourages people to drive there.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I agree, this is just more socialism that Obama invented to socialize the country and take more money out of the hands of the rich. More and more, we are seeing that billionaires can not support theirselves on their paltry salaries while the poors take over the country.
Actually 99% of american food doesn't come from farmers
So 99% of all that corn, wheat, pork, beef, chicken just magically springs into existence in those megacorp factories?
http://www.grains.org/corn
http://www.ers.usda.gov/data/wheat/YBtable04.asp
http://www.epa.gov/oecaagct/ag101/cropmajor.html
http://www.fas.usda.gov/dlp/circular/2010/livestock_poultryfull101510.pdf
If you say it's converted into "american food" by those factories, that's what I'm talking about - specialization etc :).
BTW I'm not saying subsidies are good.
Say the US has 1000 nonfarmers for every subsidized farmer. As long as countries buy US products (canned food, snacks, music CDs, software, hardware, military equipment, etc) some of those 1000 nonfarmers get $$$ and the US can afford to subsidize those farmers.
Whereas if some random African country has 0.5 nonfarmers for every farmer, their farmers are not going to be able to have much of subsidies.
Of course the picture is a bit more complicated because petroleum is bought and sold in US dollars and US energy companies profit from the petroleum, and much of US agriculture is basically "leveraging" petroleum for food (fertilizer, machinery, fuel etc). So the farmers are more important as a "strategic reserve", while petroleum and coal is critical :).
So this means ISPs will finally fall under Common Carrier laws like telephones right? Right?
Why yes, I am rather interested in purchasing your bridge.
Congress created this tax. When they did they also specified what it would be used for. The FCC does not have the authority to decide to use this money for something else, no matter how worthy that something else might be, nor how obsolete the original purpose might be.
The U.S. Constitution says that only Congress may decide how Federal money can be spent.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
>>>So 99% of all that corn, wheat, pork, beef, chicken just magically springs into existence in those megacorp factories?
Pretty much.
The ground is owned by the megacorps, the seeds are owned by the megacorps, and the employees are megacorp employees. 99% of the food produced is not by "farmers" but by the agricultural equivalent of Microsoft or GM or Exxon. Except they call themselves ADM, Monsanto, and so on.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
So let me get this straight. Congress back in 1934 passes a bill to fund rural phone lines by charging city slickers an extra tax on their phone bill.
Now 70 years later the FTC decides on its own that it can levy any tax it wants to against anyone it wants to and put the money towards any program it so desires.
Nope.
First of all, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) isn't involved in this story at all, the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) is.
Second, the provision of law governing the universal service fund (47 USC Sec. 254) has been amended by Congress since 1934, and the current version adopted by Congress states:
Universal service is an evolving level of telecommunications services that the Commission shall establish periodically under this section, taking into account advances in telecommunications and information technologies and services.
See, the thing with Congress' ability to make law is that it keeps being exercised, its not just something that happened once in the distant past.
Does Congress' power to tax and make law have little meaning anymore? Is our form of government becoming one in which bureaucrats decide for themselves what taxes to levy and what laws to create?
I'm hoping at least a few people on SlashDot recognize the types of precedents that have been set over the last several years in how it undermines the intentional separation of powers in the US Constitution. It's more insidious and the long-term consequences more dire than I'm sure most people here realize.
I'm hoping that at least a few people on Slashdot will recognize the importance of actually having some idea of what the facts are before launching into crazed rants.
Congress created this tax. When they did they also specified what it would be used for. The FCC does not have the authority to decide to use this money for something else, no matter how worthy that something else might be, nor how obsolete the original purpose might be.
Really? So what do you think Congress defined the tax as being for? Telephone service alone? Nope, not under the current version of the law adopted by Congress governing the USF. 42 USC Sec. 254(c)(1):
Universal service is an evolving level of telecommunications services that the Commission shall establish periodically under this section, taking into account advances in telecommunications and information technologies and services.
Seems to me that Congress has specifically granted the FCC authority it has proposed using.
Next time you want to accuse someone of breaking the law, try checking what the law is first.
On my last months' bill the Federal Universal Service Fund charge was $2.18 for Long Distance, and $0.94 for Local Service. Add to that the $6.07 Federal Access Charge (which Qwest basically pays to itself for access to the long distance network), the 3% Federal Excise Tax (which was put into place to fund the Spanish-American War in 1898, repealed and reinstated several times since), and various other Universal Service Funds, Relay Service Funds, 911 Fund, Regulatory Surcharge (a faux tax put in place to recoup the costs of complying with regulations) and state, county and city sales taxes. And that's just for my land line, not my mobile. All amounting to about 11-12% of my phone service bill. What does all this get us? A bunch of overpaid union employees, an increasingly outdated and fragile telecommunications infrastructure, and the slowest, most expensive broadband speeds in the developed world. $8,000,000,000 could buy a lot of fiber infrastructure, if it was managed properly. Which it won't be. ...
Nothing to see here but us trolls...move along...
42 USC Sec. 254(c)(1):
Actually, that's wrong. It's title 47, not title 42, so that should be 47 USC Sec. 254(c).
If there's a USA wish/murmur to combat bad things on the internet, why not pull another Tor and fund development of things like DNCCurve/CurveCP through this?
MilkMiruku
You already pay it you tit.
I know that it is rather routine for Congress to write bad laws like this one.
I really don't think the alternative you seem to be offering -- Congress essentially abolishing all executive branch regulatory bodies and doing everything currently done through regulation as legislation -- is really desirable.
"Improving access to advanced telecommunications services" is entirely too subjective
That's the high level purpose. The law (47 USC Sec. 254) provides additional detail on both the substance (factors to be considered in deciding what should be encompassed ) and procedure (mechanisms by which changes shall be considered and adopted) associated with the determination of "universal service".
You would know that, if you knew what the law was before criticizing it; you didn't, and you still apparently don't.
I do know that Congress often delegates quite a bit to regulatory agencies. I beleive that that is bad policy .It encourages people to blame bureaucrats for things that they should be blaming their Congressperson for.
Everything that is within the jurisdiction of a regulatory agency is so because of Congressional action. Whether people "should" blame Congress or the regulatory authority depends on whether the problem they have is with the regulatory agency having the scope of authority Congress has delegated it or whether the problem they have is with the way the regulatory agency is exercising its authority; those are two separate questions. But it makes no sense to say that this delegation is bad policy on the basis that it supposedly encourages people to blame the wrong set of decision makers, since it does no such thing. Anyone who blames the wrong set of decision makers does so based on ignorance of who is responsible for the decision that they specifically disagree with, and this does not encourage (or discourage) that kind of ignorance.