Why the FCC pays for landlines but not broadband Internet

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The Federal Communications Commission currently distributes $2.4 billion/year to schools for telecom from a fund called E-Rate, paid for out of fees collected by telecommunications companies. But so far, only half of E-Rate's money goes toward broadband connections. Some pays for cellphones, and a quarter of it pays for phone service -- translation: landlines.

"That made sense back at the beginning of the program [in 1996]," says EducationSuperhighway Director Evan Marwell. "How did most schools get on the Internet in 1996? Dial up. But today, how many schools get on the Internet with dial up?" When E-Rate funds do pay for broadband, it turns out that we don’t really know exactly how much bandwidth schools get for the money. "That would be really useful information," says Danielle Kehl, a policy analyst with the New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute. Kehl says the FCC doesn't get information from broadband providers about the rates schools pay and the bandwidth they get. For a simple reason: "They don’t actually ask the telecom providers for that precise information," she says. She hopes the agency will change that don’t ask, don’t tell practice.


Why the FCC pays for landlines but not broadband Internet