Rural Americans are a distinct minority in the United States, even if they don't see themselves as one.
Here is another in a long line of government handouts to improve life in rural America:
Rural Ohioans’ telephone and Internet service is about to get a boost, thanks to a $1.5 billion federal program.
CenturyLink, Cincinnati Bell, AT&T, Frontier Communications,
FairPoint Communications and Windstream Communications have all accepted
Federal Communication Commission funding in the form of annual
subsidies to offer broadband service to rural homes and businesses that
are currently not being served.
Overall, carriers in Ohio will get $58.5 million in annual support to serve 166,967 homes and businesses.
The funding is needed because nearly 1 in 3 rural Americans lack
access to broadband service, compared with only 1 in 100 urban
Americans, according to the FCC’s latest Broadband Progress Report.
The broadband service is intended to ensure universal telephone
coverage as companies phase out traditional landline service as well as
add Internet service to areas where the cost of providing such service
would otherwise be prohibitive.
“Access to modern broadband is critical to life in today’s society,”
said FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, in a statement. “The financial support
provided by American ratepayers through the Connect America program is
an investment in the future of our rural communities that will pay
dividends for all Americans for years to come.”
The funding will subsidize the construction of broadband networks in
rural areas over the next six years. Forty percent of the work must be
done by the end of 2017; 100 percent by the end of 2020.
The funding will “dramatically alter the broadband landscape in Ohio
and throughout the country,” said Lindsay Shanahan, executive director
of Connect Ohio, a nonprofit that promotes broadband access in the
state.
“This phase of the Connect America Fund is about deploying broadband
to locations that do not have it, not the removal of legacy
infrastructure (such as existing landline phone service) or a possible
transition to Internet protocol-based networks,” she said.
“Recipients of this funding are required to build out broadband and
voice networks that meet various criteria beyond the obligation to
upgrade or build networks capable of broadband,” Shanahan said.
The biggest amount of funding is going to CenturyLink, which will
take $505.7 million annually to expand and support broadband for more
than 2.3 million of its rural customers across the United States. In
Ohio, CenturyLink will take $16 million annually.
Of course, this program is tied to the "Obama phones" so many rural folks bitched endlessly about around 4 years ago. The origins of the Universal Service Fund were tied to the effort to extend phone service to high cost, hard-to-serve rural areas:
The Communications Act of 1934
includes in its preamble a reference to universal service. It calls for
“rapid, efficient, Nation-wide, and world-wide wire and radio
communication service with adequate facilities at reasonable charges” to
“all the people of the United States.” Communications Act of 1934 -
Title I, Sec. 1 [47 U.S.C. 151] The Communications Act of 1934 first
established the concept of making affordable basic telephone service
available to everyone everywhere within a nation, state, or other
governmental jurisdiction.
The code was amended by the Telecommunications Act in 1996 to
include, “without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion,
national origin, or sex…” To comply, AT&T began increasing the price
of long distance service to pay for universal service. The act also
established the FCC to oversee all non-governmental broadcasting,
interstate communications, as well as international communication which
originate or terminate in the United States.
Before the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the Universal Service Fund
(USF) operated as a mechanism by which interstate long distance
carriers were assessed to subsidize telephone service to low-income
households and high-cost areas in order to ensure that all the people in
the United States have access to rapid, efficient, nationwide
communications service with sufficient facilities at realistic charges....The Universal Service Fund was first codified in the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the first major rewrite of the Communications Act of 1934.
The act addresses new challenges and opportunities of the digital
information age, with the goal of promoting an economic environment
conducive for the growth of new information technology. It also further
developed the meaning and implementation of universal service. The act
calls for the creation of a joint federal-state board to make
recommendations to the FCC on defining federal universal services and
set time tables. The act also set out immediate priorities of universal
service. These include quality and reasonably priced services, access to
advanced telecommunication services, access for rural, low-income and
high-cost regions, equitable and nondiscriminatory service, specific and
predictable price structure, access of advanced telecommunication
services for schools and health care and libraries (Sec. 254(b)(1)-(7)).
The act provided ability in the constantly changing telecommunication
environment to periodically revisit and adjust universal service, while
setting core principles (Sec. 254(c)). The 1996 act also “mandated the
creation of the universal service fund (USF) into which all
telecommunications providers are required to contribute a percentage of
their interstate and international end-user telecommunications
revenues”.
The major goals of Universal Service as mandated by the 1996 Act are as follows:
- Promote the availability of quality services at just, reasonable and affordable rates for all consumers
- Increase nationwide access to advanced telecommunications services
- Advance the availability of such services to all consumers,
including those in low income, rural, insular, and high cost areas, at
rates that are reasonably comparable to those charged in urban areas
- Increase access to telecommunications and advanced services in schools, libraries and rural health care facilities
- Provide equitable and non-discriminatory contributions from all
providers of telecommunications services to the fund supporting
universal service programs
But don't let that history get in the way of a narrative that government programs only benefit minorities with dark skin. Republican politicians have been getting elected in rural areas for more than a generation convincing the social minority residents there, beneficiaries of government programs all, that it's the poor blacks in the inner city who are being handed their hard-earned tax money, and that those politicians are going to change that by cutting taxes and slashing government programs. It just isn't true, but it plays well to a built-in bias among residents in rural areas. Fox News coverage of "Obama phones," without any background into how the underlying program benefits rural areas feeds that bias and inflames it more. I just like to poke holes in that bubble of bullshit and swamp gas.
