A revamped Universal Service Fund should prioritize areas “without any...
A revamped Universal Service Fund should prioritize areas “without any broadband or where no provider offers service at a baseline level of transmission speed” determined by the FCC, said Senate Communications Subcommittee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., and Sen. Mark Warner,…
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D-Va. In a Tuesday letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, the senators also urged that USF support broadband on a technology-neutral basis and include strong accountability and oversight. The fund should support “areas that are least likely to be built out over the next three-to-five years because their geographic and/or demographic profile make them insufficiently profitable based on commercial business models,” Kerry and Warner wrote. The FCC should annually update what constitutes a baseline level of service and “set goals for minimum target speeds for broadband that would be required to qualify for funding,” they said. To better target broadband funding, the FCC should require states to disaggregate study areas, the senators said. And the agency should cap spending “to provide an incentive for service providers to devise lower cost solutions that meet nationwide needs for both fixed and mobile broadband,” they said. “Funding should require a match from service providers and should be conditioned on reasonable access and interconnection requirements.