Big Subsidies for Big Phone Companies

BIG SUBSIDIES FOR BIG PHONE COMPANIES
[SOURCE: Associated Press, AUTHOR: John Dunbar]
A decade-old telephone tax intended to help bring affordable service to rural areas has instead turned into something quite different: a bottomless and politically protected well of cash for cell phone companies that do big business in rural America. Over the past four years, there has been nearly a tenfold increase in government-ordered subsidies paid to a few "competitive" providers - cellular phone companies paid by the fund to offer service in rural areas where an existing carrier already receives a subsidy. The Universal Service Fund has collected $44 billion over its 10-year lifetime from a surcharge on the phone bills of nearly every American. Regulators and lawmakers have long viewed the fund as inherently flawed. Even a member of the federal-state board that runs the program calls it "bizarre." But efforts to change it have been derailed repeatedly by companies that benefit from the largesse and by supporters in Congress who represent sparsely populated states. Now there are new calls for change, driven by the dramatic increase in money flowing to the cellular companies competing for rural business.
http://www.baytownsun.com/wire.lasso?report=/dynamic/stories/T/TELEPHONE...