Universal Service Fund

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) submitted a formal challenge to the Federal Communications Commission's Mobility Fund Phase II initial eligible areas map, the only lawmaker to do so. He argued the map does not accurately show broadband coverage in West Virginia. “Rural areas were getting screwed, and all of West Virginia was getting screwed because these big-time carriers were showing, ‘Oh, this is our area. We’ve got it taken care of, don’t worry,'” he said. “They’re only going to go into areas where they know that they’re going to have a return on an investment.

A new proposal spearheaded by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai aims to eliminate the ability of certain carriers to provide Lifeline services, disproportionately affecting rural areas. Kansas would be hit hard by the harsh new Lifeline rules. It is estimated that about 70 percent of the state’s 45,131 Lifeline households would lose service, including veterans and seniors.

There’s a lot more behind the news that the Federal Communications Commission plans to increase the minimum broadband speed target in rural areas that wasn’t detailed in FCC Chairman Pai’s recent blog post about current commission initiatives. The plan to increase the minimum broadband speed is just one aspect of a 125-page order that the FCC will consider next month. Also detailed in the order: a plan to make new offers of model-based A-CAM broadband support to rural rate-of-return (ROR) carriers.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced that the following items are tentatively on the agenda for the Open Commission Meeting scheduled for Wednesday, December 12, 2018:

What will wake America up from its Thanksgiving day food coma? Here's the Federal Communications Commission’s December 2018 open meeting agenda:

I want to give your readers an update on the latest move by AT&T to push people off the traditional home phone service they have relied upon for decades. This past Sept, we began to field calls from worried landline customers, including seniors on fixed incomes, who were among an estimated 5,300 customers to receive a letter from AT&T with the blunt headline: “Your Lifeline discount ends November 20, 2018.” The letter referred to the federal Lifeline program, which offers a monthly credit of up to $11.75 for qualifying low-income customers.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai, flanked by advisers, spent roughly two hours in Sen. Dan Sullivan’s office, but it wasn’t enough to satisfy the concerns that have prompted Sen Sullivan (R-AK) to block FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr’s nomination to a full term. "I’m not lifting it right now,” said Sen Sullivan after the meeting. He said more follow-up is necessary and that he will make that decision about Commissioner Carr later. Sen Sullivan has longstanding concerns about the flow of subsidies in the FCC’s rural health care program.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai will finally meet with Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) to discuss the senator’s longstanding frustrations with how the agency is doling out telecommunications subsidies. At stake: the nominations of Brendan Carr to a full term and Geoffrey Starks to a new term as FCC commissioners. Sen. Sullivan and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) are blocking Carr’s nomination over a fight about how the agency handled a funding request from the Anchorage, Alaska-based General Communications that would provide telecom services to rural health care providers.

This study draws on participant observation and interviews with low-income adults in Chicago to show how the poor stay connected to phone service and mobile Internet through the possession of multiple phones, including those subsidized by government aid. The “accumulation” of phones by individuals is widely observed, though underexplored in scholarship. Popular media coverage in the US frames the possession of multiple phones by people in poverty as criminal or excessive.