Trump’s FCC failed on broadband access. Now, Biden’s FCC has to clean up the mess

For some time, many experts have been warning that the universal service funding system is in a death spiral, as the base on which the fees are assessed—generally a telecom company’s interstate and international end-user revenues—is shrinking. The new Federal Communications Commission is forced to consider a rising assessment on a shrinking revenue base to address an increasing demand, with Ajit Pai’s FCC having not done any of the analytic, political, or legal work necessary to make adjustments. Pai was willing to spend billions to address the needs of rural communities lacking broadband. But his attitude about solving the far larger adoption divide was quite different. Rather than address Lifeline’s inadequacies, Pai quietly went about making the program weaker.