Broadband stimulus done, now to the real heavy lifting: USF reform

The most profound impact on the availability of high-speed Internet access in the United States is likely to flow from universal service fund reform and other regulatory changes. Such issues involve billions of dollars on an annual basis. At its essence, improving U.S. broadband penetration — which lags more than two dozen countries, despite this country being the world's biggest high-speed Internet market — will probably require a dramatic redistribution of government telecom subsidies. The Obama administration may offer more clues to its broadband objectives when it unveils its 2010 budget proposal in the coming weeks. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Copps and state regulators have been pressing to make broadband a component of a recalibrated universal service regime that currently provides about $7 billion in federal support for low-income and rural citizens, rural healthcare facilities, schools and libraries. Reforming outdated intercarrier compensation guidelines — which govern payments wireless and other telecom service providers pay one another for carrying each others' traffic — is viewed as inexorably linked to changes in universal service support in high-cost rural locales.