USF and Cloud Services

The Computer & Communication Industry Association released a paper recently warning about the impact of imposing Universal Service Fund fees on what it characterizes as cloud services. CCIA is an association that lobbies on behalf of some of the largest web companies like Amazon, Meta, Google, Apple, Netflix, and Cloudflare. It’s somewhat refreshing to see that the lobbyists in other industries are as willing to greatly exaggerate claims about the impact of regulatory and legal changes as the telecommunications industry. The bottom line is that the CCIA analysis is downright silly when it threatens that a $3 billion fee on cloud services might wipe out 5 percent of South Carolina’s annual State budget or might decrease national GDP by at least $59 billion. But you have to give it to lobbyists—the purpose of the analysis was to provide talking points for politicians in DC, and I suspect it provided the talking points CCIA was looking for.