About $4.1 billion of the Universal Service Fund’s $6.6 billion d...
About $4.1 billion of the Universal Service Fund’s $6.6 billion disbursements in 2006 went to “high-cost” rural subsidies, according to a report issued Monday by the Federal-State Universal Service Joint Board. The staff report said schools and libraries support…
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was $1.7 billion, low-income was $808 million and rural health care was $41 million. High-cost support increased by $300 million from the year before, which the report attributed to more subsidies going to competitive carriers. The USF report tracks a variety of telecom trends and is the only document that includes statistics from all incumbent local telephone companies in the U.S., the FCC said in a news release accompanying the joint board report. For example, the report shows Bell access lines declined to about 118 million in 2006, compared with 127 million in 2005, while fiber installations grew.