Universal Service Fund

The Federal Communications Commission adopted a Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking seeking comment on further reforms to the Rural Health Care (RHC) Program rules to promote program efficiency and ensure that rural healthcare providers receive appropriate levels of funding. Specifically, the FCC is seeking comment on several facets of the RHC Program including:

One glimmer of hope from the pandemic: The Universal Service Fund (USF), the government fund designed to make sure everyone in the United States is digitally connected, finally may get an overdue overhaul. While lawmakers and policymakers long have recognized the need for a rebuild, the pandemic made it clear that reform no longer can wait.

I’ve been wondering lately if some of the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) reverse auction winners are having second thoughts about accepting the RDOF awards. It’s amazing how much the broadband world has changed since the end of that auction in December 2020. It's gotten more expensive to build fiber projects over the last year. The cost of labor is an even bigger concern. New grants and new requirements, that did not exist at the time of the auction, also complicate the situation.

Acting on instruction from Congress in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the Federal Communications Commission has invited comment on the effect of the Infrastructure Act on Universal Service Fund (USF) programs and how the FCC can reach its goals of universal deployment, affordability, adoption, availability, and equitable access to broadband throughout the United States.

INCOMPAS is pressing the Federal Communications Commission to make the smart, transparent and expedient choice to save the Universal Service Fund. By evolving USF to include contributions from broadband internet access service providers, which the FCC could do immediately without an act of Congress, INCOMPAS says low-income families, schools and rural hospitals would all benefit from this renewed commitment to ongoing affordability solutions. INCOMPAS warns that the USF program is spiraling toward disaster, with contribution levels set to rise to nearly 40%.

A lot of attention has been given to the sprawling fiber expansions announced by large operators like AT&T, Charter Communications and Frontier Communications. But there’s another rapidly growing cohort of companies quietly working to deliver broadband to some of the hardest to reach areas of the country: electric companies and cooperatives. National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) CEO Jim Matheson said electric co-ops haven’t always been part of the broadband equation.

The Ad Hoc Telecom Users Committee, INCOMPAS, NTCA – The Rural Broadband Association, Public Knowledge, the Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband (SHLB) Coalition, and the Voice on the Net Coalition, as well 332 entities representing a broad and diverse group of stakeholders submitted this letter to the Federal Communications Commission to take immediate action to reform and stabilize the funding mechanism that supports the Universal Service Fund (USF).

The Federal Communications Commission is starting to get input on its examination of the future of the Universal Service Fund (USF). That input includes whether to make internet service providers (ISPs) pay into the fund, as telecommunications companies currently do, given that the baseline advanced communications service that USF is paying for is increasingly broadband rather than the phone service the program was designed for. Also on the table is whether to make streaming services pay into the subsidy given that they are riding that broadband service into homes.

The Wireline Competition Bureau, in conjunction with the Rural Broadband Auctions Task Force and the Office of Economics and Analytics, authorized Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (Auction 904) support for 2,576 winning bids.

As 2021 turned into 2022, the Federal Communications Commission transformed the Emergency Broadband Benefit Program into the Affordable Connectivity Program. Congress created the Affordable Connectivity Program through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and provided the FCC $14.2 billion to subsidize broadband service for low-income households. Broadband providers will receive up to $30/month (or up to $75/month if the household is on Tribal Land) for providing service to low-income households.