FCC Hard at Work with $4.5B Connect America Fund
In this modern age, it’s hard to believe that there are still areas in the US that don’t have broadband access. And this is what Chairman Julius Genachowski’s proposal aims to resolve.
In his proposal, which garnered a 4-0 vote, Genachowski plans to overhaul a program that has been devoted to building telephone connections in places where it’s expensive to supply service.
“We are taking a system designed for the Alexander Graham Bell era of rotary telephones and modernizing it for the era of Steve Jobs and the Internet future he imagined,” Genachowski said before the vote at an agency meeting in Washington. The expanded broadband may result in “hundreds of thousands of jobs” in rural areas, he said.
The FCC approved the $4.5 billion subsidy to push through with the plan. Also, the FCC voted to lower call rates charged by companies. This move by the FCC is aimed at helping rural companies and also to prevent quick depletion of the Universal Service Fund.
The FCC will rely on competitive bidding in awarding subsidies as well as give higher funds to those companies that deliver services to areas that are hard to reach.
But the FCC proposal is being contested by major service providers. The six-company plan, which includes AT&T, Verizon, CenturyLink, Fairpoint Communications, Frontier Communications Corp. and Windstream, wants to be the first ones to get the broadband subsidies.
Users will benefit greatly with this proposed plan as this will either make rates cheaper or at least maintain their current bill. According to Genachowski, the plan “will help cut the number of Americans bypassed by broadband by up to one half over the following five years.”
The FCC pushed through a number of initiatives recently. Last month the FCC published the new rules designed to prevent Internet providers from deliberately blocking or slowing traffic that will take effect on November 20. And because of the FCC, subscribers won’t be shocked when they go over their monthly plan, as network providers are now going to alert subscribers that they’re on the verge of exceeding their minutes. The notice will arrive automatically as text messages, and subscribers won’t have to sign up for any additional services to receive the notifications.
Since you’re here …
… We’d like to tell you about our mission and how you can help us fulfill it. SiliconANGLE Media Inc.’s business model is based on the intrinsic value of the content, not advertising. Unlike many online publications, we don’t have a paywall or run banner advertising, because we want to keep our journalism open, without influence or the need to chase traffic.The journalism, reporting and commentary on SiliconANGLE — along with live, unscripted video from our Silicon Valley studio and globe-trotting video teams at theCUBE — take a lot of hard work, time and money. Keeping the quality high requires the support of sponsors who are aligned with our vision of ad-free journalism content.
If you like the reporting, video interviews and other ad-free content here, please take a moment to check out a sample of the video content supported by our sponsors, tweet your support, and keep coming back to SiliconANGLE.
