[Commentary] When it comes to Universal Service, there seems to be consensus that today's plan should transition to one focused on broadband Past-focused people have been watching broadband service grow while voice declines.
Forward-focused people see all the cool things that could be done if broadband were more widely available. And present-focused people have prioritized all the things on their to-do list, and getting broadband deployed is at the top. But different groups have different ideas about how to reach it.
While the National Broadband Plan seems to have been written by people with a heavy future focus, the Universal Service Reform Act, authored by Reps. Rick Boucher (D-VA) and Lee Terry (R-Nebraska), seems to have been written by people who are primarily past-focused. The strengths and weaknesses of each plan are a direct result of those divergent viewpoints. Future-focused people, like those involved with the NBP, believe in starting any project with the proverbial clean sheet of paper — an approach that often can help bring fresh thinking to a project.
The past-focused people who wrote the Universal Service Reform Act didn't need a brainstorming session to know what needs to be done there. With small carriers losing more and more access charge revenues, the act's recommendations include prohibiting any carrier from omitting information from call detail records that another carrier requires in order to bill for terminating the call. The bill recommends that if only one or two wireless carriers are eligible to receive Universal Service support for a particular service area, those carriers should receive support at no more than the level they receive today. Yet wireless carriers today often receive support at a level that does not represent their actual costs of delivering service because it is based largely on the incumbent landline carrier's costs.
