TeleFrieden: How the FCC’s 8th Broadband Report Became a Referendum on the Marketplace: "[Previously] FCC Commissioners of both parties gladly supported extraordinary and admittedly too generous and inefficient universal service programs. These initiatives included “rate integration” that required carriers to average in the higher costs of providing telephone service in non-continental United States locales, e.g., Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. No one balked at providing “free” satellite earth stations to Pacific island residents whose governments have an affiliation with the United States, e.g., The Federated States of Micronesia. Nobody invoked Ann Rand to suggest that rural residents should suffer any cost disadvantage for the various upside opportunities from living in the hinterland.
Now a Report to Congress somehow has all sorts of underlying messages. By truthfully answering a question posed by Congress that more work needs to be done to achieve ubiquitous and affordable broadband, the FCC apparently is foreshadowing a broad agenda to pre-empt the marketplace."'via Blog this'
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