Public Knowledge and Benton Foundation Want Universal Service To Be Universal

The Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) proposals to revamp the Universal Service Fund (USF) to provide broadband service will leave out many subscribers, Public Knowledge and the Benton Foundation told the Commission in comments filed April 18.

“For the first time in FCC history, ‘universal’ will come to mean “close enough,” PK and Benton told the Commission. Through the use of a “reverse auction” allowing carriers to bid to serve small service areas, carriers which want to provide universal service will be able to pick and choose which areas they want to serve, the filing said. “In seeking to connect those 8-10 percent of households left behind by the market, the Commission must not abandon some households simply because it is inconvenient to connect them,” PK and Benton said. “The whole purpose of designating geographic areas with minimum service requirements within each is to ensure that provision of service to high-cost areas can be cross-subsidized by serving low-cost areas as well. Drawing too fine a grid on currently unserved areas defeats this purpose, and will only allow bidders to skim off provision to the most profitable of the unserved areas,” PK and Benton said.

To solve the problem and allow service to be extended as far as possible, PK and Benton suggested that the USF be reconfigured to provide USF support to local communities which set up their own services in areas not sufficiently attractive to private companies. In addition, carriers receiving USF funds should be prohibited from offering “abusive terms of service” such as usage caps, while at the same time requiring that carriers not “prioritize or degrade specific applications or content” on their networks.