Connecting Rural America

Universal Service Fund reform is aimed at helping connect every American to high-speed Internet by the end of the decade, just as the fund did for telephone service in the 20th century, according to the Federal Communications Commission.

The next step in the process came on April 25, when the FCC officially launched the new Connect America Fund (CAF), a reform that will be dole out $300 million to both large and small telephone companies that agree by July 24 to “strict accountability measures and buildout requirements," wrote Sharon Gillett, chief of the FCC’s Wireline Competition Bureau. After the July 24 deadline — in areas where incumbents decline to make this commitment — local exchange carriers, including cable, wireless and satellite companies, will have opportunities to compete for Connect America Fund funding, the FCC says, as part of a “reverse auction.” Small phone companies that have aggressively built out fiber-optic networks and expanded their high-speed Internet access worry that the shift from USF to CAF may force them to slow these expansions. And some small towns have community fiber networks that are ineligible for CAF support.