Remarks of FCC Commissioner O'Rielly before the FCBA Young Lawyers Committee Universal Service Fund Seminar

I’d like to outline a few areas of our Universal Service Fund policy that I am currently focused on and address certain matters in need of attention.

• Eliminating Duplicative Funding Among the USF Programs. Specifically, the use of E-Rate funding to overbuild high-cost program investments and to pay for fiber buildout to schools and libraries even where a fiber connection already exists.
• Stretching New Broadband Buildout Funding as Far as Possible. Stretching scarce USF dollars as far as possible means to me being inclusive of different technologies and treating them agnostically.
• Better Administration of the USF. As many of you know, I have long been critical of the Universal Service Administrative Company's (USAC) performance and transparency, having referred to that entity as a “black hole." We should take great pains to ensure that USAC’s role in our mapping effort is purely ministerial and avoid USAC’s inappropriate assumption of an adjudicatory role in any challenge process we adopt.