The Universal Service Fund is funded  by a quarterly surcharge on interstate and international telecommunications revenue. Each quarter, a private nonprofit known as the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC) estimates how much money it needs to fund the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) myriad universal service initiatives. It also estimates the amount of telecommunications revenue expected to be generated by industry, and from there calculates the surcharge percentage necessary to cover program costs. USAC proposes this surcharge amount to the agency, and it is “deemed approved” if the agency takes no action to change it within 14 days of publication. In other words, USAC determines its own budget to administer the program and then sets the tax rate it needs to cover that budget. At most, this process receives perfunctory FCC review, but no congressional oversight. USAC operates off-budget and is insulated from the appropriations process. Unsurprisingly, this lack of accountability has deleterious effects. Since the fund’s inception in 1996, the political appetite for universal service initiatives has grown, while the revenue base supporting the fund has contracted, causing the surcharge to skyrocket from 3 percent in 1998 to a whopping 32.6 percent today. And the fund’s history is littered with allegations of waste, fraud, and abuse. The constitutionality of this structure is currently being litigated in the Fifth Circuit.

The US Department of Labor (DOL) is considering the essential role of digital skills and broadband in the workforce. The National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA) emphasized that digital skills are key to digital equity in our recent comments in response to DOL’s Digital Literacy and Resilience Request for Information. NDIA’s comments highlighted models of digital skills programs operating within the framework of holistic digital inclusion strategies. NDIA emphasized five overarching points:

• Holistic strategies should be prioritized.
• Digital literacy and resilience are urgently important for adults and youth across their full lifespans and careers.
• Digital skills are dramatically more relevant and powerful when interwoven with other skills.
• DOL should capitalize on the momentum of organizations that already have expertise in teaching adults and have earned the trust of key populations.
• The federal government should better coordinate its investments in digital skills.

I’d like to focus on the future of 5G as a technology that I think could revolutionize private networking in the US and allow this country to strengthen its international position in manufacturing. Apart from its benefits to consumers, I know that many policymakers are counting on the 5G revolution to create new application frameworks and new industrial possibilities. Non-phone, non-consumer cellular devices are a product category that goes from niche to viability at scale through 5G’s capacities in latency, density, multiple planes, and network edge intelligence. But precisely because they are a new product category dependent on sophisticated and capital-intensive network infrastructure, we have to ask how we get from a consumer-facing cell network, and the businesses that grew up around it, to the non-consumer uses that show such potential. If consumers see benefits from 5G, network infrastructure companies like telecoms, tower companies, and tower equipment companies will have the money to keep building the networks we need to support a new generation of business and public safety applications—just as we’re starting to see in countries like China, where 5G has a head start. So, to get economies of scale and pervasive network availability, we need to find smarter ways to monetize 5G in the short term, so that the technology can be more broadly deployed for alternative uses. That is where an exclusive use-licensing model can and must play a starring role. The FCC is still committed to consumer 5G spectrum commercialization, and I don’t think we have to choose between two models; instead, we have to look at every option and every model that is likely to enable growth, and we have to allow the private sector to explore a variety of technological options.

John Malone and his former colleagues on Charter’s board agreed to an $87.5 million settlement of claims the billionaire unfairly benefited from the $79 billion purchase of Time Warner Cable he helped finance. The accord disclosed in a Delaware court filing resolves an investor’s lawsuit against directors of the second-largest US cable company over their handling of the 2016 deal. The money will come from insurance covering directors named in the suit and will go into Charter’s coffers, not to the shareholder who filed the case. Investor Matthew Sciabacucci accused the directors of allowing Malone, then on the board, to reap unfair tax benefits from stock he got in the merger through a side deal. Charter agreed to settle Sciabacucci’s claims “to avoid the burden, expense, disruption, and distraction of further litigation,” according to court filings. The directors said they aren’t admitting any wrongdoing as part of the deal. [The case is Sciabacucci v. Liberty Broadband Corp., No. 11418, Delaware Chancery Court (Georgetown).]