Telcos target Universal Service Fund
Major long-distance phone companies like AT&T are lobbying in Washington for an overhaul of the $7.1 billion Universal Service Fund, which helps pay for phone service for poor, rural areas and schools and libraries. They are facing opposition from rural phone companies over the question of how to move the fund, which was formed in the 1930s and expanded with the Telecommunications Act of 1996, into the Internet age. "It's worked for voice telecom," says Dan Mitchell, vice president of the legal and industry division of the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association, a trade group representing rural telecommunications providers. "It needs to be transitioned to broadband and high-speed Internet communications. That's the $64 million question — how the (Federal Communications Commission) will do that transition."
Telcos target rural phone fee