Universal Service Fund

On March 28, lawmakers from both the House of Representatives and US Senate reintroduced bipartian legislation to expand broadband access to rural communities. The Reforming Broadband Connectivity Act would strengthen funding mechanisms for the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Universal Service Fund (USF), which promotes universal access to broadband and other telecommunications services. Currently, the USF is primarily funded through landline fees, disproportionately impacting seniors, who are more likely to use landlines than other Americans.

FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks said, “I’m pleased that the Fifth Circuit agreed with what I and many others—including bipartisan members of Congress—have said about the Universal Service Fund. It is constitutional, both in concept and implementation. The Universal Service Fund continues to connect rural communities, schools, libraries, healthcare providers, and low-income households all across the country.

Coming from one of the more conservative courts in the country, this decision is a ringing ratification of the system Congress established to ensure that all Americans have affordable access to telecommunications service and advanced services like broadband. This should not come as a surprise, but once the USF was subjected to a legal challenge, the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society joined with public allies to defend this critical mechanism for ensuring universal broadband.

The 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals upheld the decades-old funding mechanisms governing Federal Communications Commission subsidies, a decision that assures the delivery of billions of dollars in broadband aid across a variety of government programs. The FCC, for more than a quarter-century, has operated this pot of subsidies known as the Universal Service Fund, amounting to roughly $9 billion annually.

In this report, the Federal Communications Commission's Wireline Competition Bureau analyzes how the Connected Care Pilot Program and the COVID-19 Telehealth Program impacted healthcare providers’ use of telehealth services. Telehealth took on an increasingly critical role in healthcare delivery during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic.

The Alternative Connect America Model (A-CAM) program is a monthly subsidy from the Federal Communications Commission’s Universal Service Fund (USF) that covers about 1.27 million Broadband Serviceable Locations. A-CAM's funding comes from a surcharge on phone bills. But the “contribution base” — the number of phone lines — is shrinking. That means to generate the same amount of money, the percentage of the total phone bill needs to go up. That’s been happening quarter-over-quarter for years.

Residents of Morgantown (PA) became the latest to tap into Windstream’s Kinetic fiber network. But according to Jeff Small, President of Kinetic, Morgantown is just the beginning of Windstream’s plans for 2023. The newest passings in Pennsylvania are a part of Windstream’s national rollout to overbuild fiber on top of its historic DSL footprint. “We’re building 300,000 fiber passings a year,” explained Small. “When you look at the end of 2021, we had 164,000 fiber customers.

US Senators Roger Wicker (R-MS), Ben Ray Luján (D-NM), Todd Young (R-IN), and Mark Kelly (D-AZ), reintroduced the Funding Affordable Internet with Reliable (FAIR) Contributions Act (S.856). The legislation would direct the Federal Communications Commission to conduct a study into the feasibility of collecting Universal Service Fund (USF) contributions from internet edge providers. Among other provisions, The FAIR Contributions Act would:

Nextlink is almost 2 years ahead of schedule in its Federal Communications Commission's Connect America Fund II (CAF II) broadband network construction. Nextlink was supposed to be 40% complete with its $281 million CAF II program construction but has in fact built 70% of its required locations across six states.

Cal.net, a service provider focused on offering fixed wireless access (FWA) and fiber broadband to California’s Central Valley and rural northern California, has a new CEO and new funding.