President Obama to Seek More Internet Aid for Schools and Libraries

President Barack Obama is expected to call on the Federal Communications Commission to expand its program to provide discounted high-speed Internet service to schools and libraries, even if it means increasing the fees that are tacked on to consumers’ monthly phone bills.

At an event at a school in Mooresville (NC) on June 6, President Obama will ask the FCC to revamp its Schools and Libraries program, known as E-rate, to help provide institutions with Internet speeds of up to 1 Gigabit per second, among the fastest speeds commercially available today. The Obama proposal also calls for schools to use the new funds to pay for wireless networks throughout their buildings and campuses. To pay for the technology expansion, the Administration is calling both for the FCC to improve the efficiency of the current $2.2 billion program and for consumers to be asked to pay up to $5 a year extra, or about 40 cents a month, on their phone bills. The Schools and Libraries program is part of the Universal Service Fund, an $8.7 billion program that distributes money for four uses. Nearly half of the money, $4.2 billion, goes to what is known as the High-Cost program, which helps to pay for telephone and Internet service to rural or remote areas. Administration officials say that while the E-rate program, established in 1996, currently provides low-cost Internet connections to community institutions, the speed of those services is rarely different than home subscribers can receive, about 20 megabits per second. That is fast enough for the average home consumer to stream video, but if dozens of classrooms are trying to view video or listen to digital audio files at the same time, a school’s network will operate much more slowly.