Rural consumers should decide what kind of telecom service they w...
Rural consumers should decide what kind of telecom service they want, rather than others “jamming one technology down their throats,” a CTIA spokesman said Tuesday in response to a plan to cap Universal Service Fund subsidies for wireless providers…
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(CD Oct 2 p3). “Rural consumers have every right to get the same communications abilities as New York and Houston” and that includes wireless service, he said. Wireline providers are trying to limit choices for rural consumers by limiting the amount of subsidies wireless carriers can get to serve those customers, he said. The Keep America Connected Coalition, the sponsor of Monday’s conference, appears to “start from the assumption that rural telephone companies are delivering… real value today under the ‘high cost’ portion of the USF,” said Cap the Fund, a consumer group that supports reducing the Universal Service Fund. Consumers pay “a heavy toll… for outlandish USF tax subsidies going into the pockets of both wireless companies and wireline rural telephone companies,” the group said.