Consumers' Research: High-Cost Program is the Principal Reason the Highest USF Contribution Factor

Consumers' Research is a nonprofit consumer-education organization. Its members and the individual consumers with whom it works pay a "Federal Universal Service Charge" as a separate line item on their phone bills. That charge is a tax. It is now, by the Federal Communications Commission's own proposal, 42 percent of interstate telecommunications revenues for the fourth quarter of 2026—the highest contribution factor in the history of the Fund. The High-Cost program is the principal reason. It consumes the majority of Universal Service Fund outlays. Those dollars are collected from consumers nationwide and paid to carriers to deploy and operate networks in “high-cost" areas. This funding may once have filled a gap. But it does not when the Commission's own Notice shows that unsubsidized terrestrial competitors already offer 100/20 Mbps broadband to 58 percent of locations in the relevant study areas, including a 46 percent overlap with locations that receive High-Cost support, and that of the remaining locations without unsubsidized terrestrial 100/20 Mbps service, more than 99 percent are already shown on the National Broadband Map as served at those speeds by unsubsidized satellite broadband providers.