Cap universal service subsidies across the board rather than targ...
Cap universal service subsidies across the board rather than targeting “one select group of providers,” 4 senators told the Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service in a Fri. letter. “We reiterate the need for capping the overall program and…
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doing so in a manner that does not pick winners and losers or favor one technology over another,” said Republican Sens. Sununu (N.H.), DeMint (S.C.), McCain (Ariz.) and Ensign (Nev.). Recommendations the joint board soon will make to the FCC may are expected to include temporary caps (CD April 13 p1), possibly applied only to new competitors -- mostly wireless -- rather than wireline incumbents. The FCC should regard caps not as an end in themselves, but as tools it can use to buy time in which to consider permanent reform, the letter said. The senators urged the joint board to “give significant weight to a reverse auction mechanism for distributing USF support,” a mechanism that should include all carriers, not just one “platform,” such as wireless. A reverse auction would “bid down support needed to serve particular consumers” thus reducing the USF high-cost program’s size, the senators said. Reverse auctions are efficient, guarantee “regulatory parity,” offer “market- oriented solutions” and “allow for the emergence of new technologies to many markets,” they said.