Telcos target rural phone fee - Dallas Business Journal:

http://best-go.org/?f=4&n=8
billion , which helps pay for phon e servicefor poor, rural areas and schools and They are facing opposition from rural phonde companies over the question of how to move the which was formed in in the 1930s and expanded with the Telecommunicationds Act of 1996, into the Internert age. “It’s worked for voice telecom,” says Dan vice president of the legal and industr y division ofthe Arlington, Va.-based National Telecommunications Cooperative Association, a trads group representing rural telecommunications “It needs to be transitione to broadband and high-speed Internegt communications.
That’s the $64 milliojn question — how the ( ) will do that The fund is paid for by telecommunications companies throughn what amounts to a tax on their revenuee for internationaland long-distance calls. Not surprisingly, that tax is passede on to the customers. Consumers, for instance, typically pay $2 or $3 per monthb for the Universal Service Fund ontheir long-distance bill.