Wireless industry blasts bill blocking cellphone subsidies

The wireless industry is criticizing a bill set for a House vote June 21 that would make it impossible for wireless companies to get subsidies that pay for service for low-income people. CTIA - The Wireless Association criticized the proposed legislation as unfair because its members are paying into the Universal Service Fund (USF) which finances the Lifeline program providing subsidies for poor Americans.

“This approach is inequitable and if it is Congress’ desire to end wireless provider access to the USF programs, that effort should be matched with a dollar-for-dollar reduction in what wireless providers pay into the USF,” the group’s president, Meredith Attwell Baker, said in a letter to House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). “It also ignores America’s inexorable shift away from wireline and toward wireless service, and the reality that many of those the Lifeline program aims to help, like the homeless, simply cannot be served with wireline connections,” she said. “CTIA recognizes the limits of the Lifeline program, but eligible low-income consumers, not policymakers, should choose where that support is used.”