Most Consumers Back Capping Wireless USF, Says Advocacy Group
More than 70 percent of Americans polled back capping the high-cost portion of the Universal Service Fund, and 62 percent oppose using USF subsidies to widen broadband access in rural areas, said Cap the Fund, a group opposing more USF spending. “This program requires us to trust the government not to throw money to services that could be better provided by non-subsidized companies,” said Mac Haddow of the Seniors Coalition, a Cap the Fund member.
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Results of the Opinion Research Corporation survey make clear “that Americans want the FCC to cap waste and abuse” in the USF program and those questioned “came down very strongly with no prompting against the use of federal phone bill taxes to build out rural broadband,” Graham Hueber, senior researcher at the survey company, said Wednesday during a call-in news conference.
Pollsters sought consumers’ views on capping spending after telling them that high cost USF spending has gone from $2.2 billion in 1999 to $4 billion in 2006 and that the USF “tax” consumers pay on their phone bills has risen from 2.1 percent to 11 percent. Capping drew 71 percent support from those surveyed - the same proportion that agreed when asked that the federal government should stop “providing USF subsidies to wireless companies where unsubsidized service already is being provided.”
Based on interviews with 1,009 adults, the survey data also reflected reluctance to spend on additional services such as broadband until the USF program is “cleaned up,” Haddow said. The Seniors Coalition wants rural seniors to have access to broadband technologies but questions whether USF subsidies are the best way to go, he said. The 62 percent anti-broadband response came after respondents were asked if they agreed that, “since the Internet has been kept tax-free,” the government should use “taxes” to subsidize rural broadband access.
Encouraged by Cap the Fund, consumers have sent “roughly a quarter of a million e-mails” to the FCC, Congress and the Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service endorsing a USF cap, a Cap the Fund official said.
Paul Garnett, assistant vice president of regulatory affairs at CTIA, said the poll results seem to contradict data from MyWireless.Org, which said that 70 percent of consumers reported backing use of more of the universal service fund to help wireless carriers improve rural wireless service. Only 14% of consumers oppose such a proposal. “While consumers clearly are concerned about the overall price tag of universal service and how the current mechanisms operate, they recognize that high-quality, ubiquitous wireless services remains an important and yet unfulfilled universal service goal,” Garnett said. “This yet again underscores the need for policymakers to focus on long-term universal service reforms.”
“It is fascinating that none of the discussion of abuse of the USF and the need for reform touches on the Schools and Libraries portion, which accounts for billions of dollars and which has been subject to incredible fraud and abuse,” said a second wireless industry source. “While the finger has been pointed at the wireless industry as the cause of the so- called explosion of the fund, the bulk of the dollars still flow to the incumbent LECs. Until how they draw money from the USF is significantly changed, reform is largely meaningless.”