Universal Service Fund

The National Grange, which advocates for rural and agricultural interests, has joined with Consumer Action and the former chair of the Oglala Sioux Tribe Utility commission to oppose Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai's proposal to revamp the FCC's Lifeline low income advanced communications subsidy program, called Lifeline. They used words highly charged words like "knock out," "cripple," "kill" and "destroy" to characterize the proposal. The Grange et al.

For many university students, high-speed internet access on campus is as expected as sidewalks and electricity. With a large number of college curriculums and tools dependent on these digital connections, what happens for students who don’t have regular access to high-speed internet? According to new research from the Independent Colleges and Universities of Florida (ICUF) presented to the Higher Education Coordinating Council (HECC), the lack of widely available broadband internet access in Florida is correlated to a smaller percentage of citizens with college degrees or certificates.

Simply put, if you truly believe in the transformative power of broadband, as a tool of digital and economic empowerment, your focus cannot begin and end, with infrastructure. If you believe in universal access to 911, if you believe in education, or healthcare, or civic  engagement, if you believe that all of those national purposes are advanced by ensuring all Americans are connected, then you cannot ignore the affordability side of the equation.

The National Hispanic Media Coalition, Color of Change, NAACP and the Benton Foundation are among the organizations concerned about proposed changes to the Lifeline program, which is on the docket for the Federal Communications Commission’s upcoming open meeting. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai -- who has long called for reforms to deter waste, fraud and abuse in Lifeline -- is seeking a vote at the agency’s Nov. 16 meeting on a major overhaul of the program, which subsidizes phone and broadband service for the poor.

The majority of school districts today (85 percent) fully meet the Federal Communications Commission’s short-term goal for broadband connectivity of 100 Mbps per 1,000 students. However, recurring costs remain the most significant barrier for schools in their efforts to increase connectivity. Collecting feedback from 445 large, small, urban and rural school district leaders nationwide, the fifth annual survey examines the current state of technology infrastructure in US K-12 districts. (The FCC has used past findings to modernize and expand funding of E-rate.)

The Senate Communications Subcommittee looked at the impact of the internet of things on rural America in a hearing Nov 7, with both sides of the aisle agreeing that the Federal Communications Commission needed better data on where broadband is and isn't deployed, given that connectivity is key to IoT deployment.

[Commentary] On November 16, 2017, the Federal Communications Commission will vote on an item that will impact the commission's Lifeline program, which provides discounts on telecommunications services for qualifying low-income consumers. On October 26, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai released a draft of the item in advance of the November vote. Here we break down the rules that the FCC plans on changing immediately at the November meeting, the new proposals the FCC is seeking comment on, and the more general evaluation the FCC is launching into the program's "ultimate purposes." [Kevin Taglang]

Hundreds of state and local efforts to connect rural and remote schools to fiber-optic networks have been delayed or rejected by federal officials during the past two years, jeopardizing the push to bring high-speed internet to the country's hardest-to-connect classrooms. Broadband proponents say the problems stem from confusing barriers erected by the Federal Communications Commission and the Universal Service Administrative Company, which oversee and administer the E-rate, a $3.9 billion program to help schools and libraries pay for internet access and other telecommunications services.

[Commentary] Last week the Federal Communications Commission, led by Chairman Ajit Pai, announced two orders that will be voted on later in Nov, which would roll back hard fought civil rights advances — at a time when our educational and economic opportunities, as well as political participation, are increasingly dependent upon communications infrastructure and technology. 

Sen Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) led a bipartisan group of thirty-nine Sens in a letter urging the Federal Communications Commission to ensure its commitment to affordable and reliable broadband for consumers in hardest to reach communities across rural America. “A lack of resources to meet our [shared national broadband] goals is undermining investment and consumer access to affordable broadband across much of rural America. For this reason, we write to encourage the FCC to take the much-needed step of addressing the High-Cost Universal Service Fund budget shortfall,” the senators wrote.