Title II And The Return of the “Gore Tax.” Or, The Debate We Should Be Having.

[Commentary] Here’s the debate we should be having: do we still believe in Universal Service or not?

If we no longer believe in Universal Service as a fundamental principle, fine. Let’s own that and end the program. If we do believe in the principle of universal service, and we agree that broadband is the critical communications medium of the 21st Century, it makes no sense to play tax arbitrage games with definitions. The FCC continues to play silly, complicated games with the Connect America Fund (CAF) because everyone wants to redirect USF support to broadband but nobody wants to include broadband in the contribution base. As a result, an increasingly smaller base of voice services is supporting an increasingly larger set of overall services. This makes no sense and is inherently unsustainable.