The Future of Universal Service

For decades, Congress has made it the United States's policy to make modern communications services available to all Americans. This policy recognizes that in certain rural areas and economically depressed communities, the fxed costs associated with broadband deployment would make providing service prohibitive absent government subsidies. The principal means by which Congress has authorized the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to achieve universal service, however, no longer makes sense in today's technological environment. Currently, through the Universal Service Fund, the FCC subsidizes broadband deployment with fees collected from providers (and ultimately users) of legacy communications services like voice telephony. That system is unfair, as it unduly and regressively taxes the disproportionately lower-income Americans who continue to use legacy voice services. It is also unsustainable, as the FCC will soon be unable to collect suficient revenue from the dwindling number of legacy-service users to fund modern broadband deployment. Recent congressional actions suggest a potential path out of this dilemma. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Congress directly appropriated billions of dollars to subsidize broadband deployment and enable lower-income Americans to stay connected. Congress could choose to make such appropriations permanent and tailored to areas of genuine need, rather than continue to support the existing archaic universal-service funding mechanism. Absent direct appropriations, there will be increasing calls to reform the Universal Service Fund to expand its contribution base to keep it solvent. For example, FCC commissioners from both parties and some internet service providers have proposed requiring internet platforms to contribute to the fund because they benefit from the user trafic that rides over modern broadband networks.
Nearly 90 years after Congress first declared it the policy of the United States that all Americans should have access to 'rapid, eficient, Nation-wide, and world-wide' communications services, (1) and [...]