Cost could complicate school broadband plan

Senior Administration officials said ConnectED would require a one-time infusion of capital that would cost individual Americans little.

Administration officials expect to pay for part of the program through savings rung out of the Universal Service Fund. That most likely isn’t going to be enough to increase capacity for all the schools and educational institutions that may want it, according to Federal Communications Commission sources. Requests from schools already exceed the amount available from the $2.3 billion-dollar E-Rate fund. E-Rate is part of the Universal Service Fund, which is designed to give all Americans access to telecommunications. Administration officials conceded to reporters that the program could bump up the Universal Service Fund charge on customers’ monthly phone bills by no more than 40 cents.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan said it’s not clear that the telephone charge would have to go up, or by how much, until the Federal Communications Commission looks more closely at existing funding streams and the needs of the initiative.