As the FCC considers reformation of the Universal Service Fund, Congress has its own ideas for change. Meanwhile, the Keep USF Fair Coalition is taking sides against the FCC and Chairman Kevin Martin’s support of a numbers-based system, and professing ideas more in line with a newly proposed House bill.
The numbers-based system would asses USF fees of $1-$2 more per month to everyone with a landline telephone, regardless of whether consumers make long-distance calls. Martin supports this method, as opposed to the current revenue-based system, or the proposal that the government levy charges based on the number of connections – whether Internet, landline or cable – per household.
One of the most widely floated ideas is to broaden the required base of contributors so the USF continues to grow, promoting rural broadband and wireless infrastructure investment and access. Indeed, that is the approach the Keep USF Fair Coalition supports, as well as Congressmen Rick Boucher (D-Va.) and Lee Terry (R-Neb.), who on Thursday unveiled draft legislation called the Universal Service Reform Act of 2005.
Boucher and Terry’s proposed legislation would require any entity paying into the USF under the current system, such as long-distance providers, to contribute, as well as cable telephony and VoIP providers, and providers offering network connections for a fee to the public – including DSL, cable modem, WiMAX and broadband over powerline providers – to pay into the fund.
The proposed bill calls for input by Dec. 23 and will not be considered before next year. Boucher and Terry say they want to encourage broadband deployment in rural areas, and their bill would require recipients of USF payments to deploy broadband with download speeds of at least 1mbps within the first five years of the bill’s enactment.
The legislation also seeks to reduce the pool of carriers asking for universal service funding by requiring providers to meet specific conditions, and by compensating eligible carriers based on their actual costs of providing service. The bill also calls for help resolving the problem of phantom traffic, which would increase the amount of intercarrier compensation carriers receive. The act also would change the USF’s rural health care support mechanism by making sure rural medical facilities do not pay more than urban health care providers for services including broadband.
