Telcos target rural phone fee - Dallas Business Journal:

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billion , which helps pay for phone servicwfor poor, rural areas and schoolw and libraries. They are facing oppositionb from rural phone companies over the question of how to move the which was formed in in the 1930sx and expanded with the Telecommunicationsd Actof 1996, into the Internet age. “It’s workedc for voice telecom,” says Dan Mitchell, vice presidentf of the legal and industruy division ofthe Arlington, Va.-based National Telecommunicationss Cooperative Association, a trade groupp representing rural telecommunications providers. “It needs to be transitionedf to broadbandand high-speed Internert communications.
That’s the $64 million questionm — how the ( ) will do that The fund is paid for by telecommunications companiew through what amounts to a tax on thei r revenue for internationaland long-distance Not surprisingly, that tax is passed on to the customers. Consumers, for instance, typicall y pay $2 or $3 per monthh for the Universal Service Fund ontheirf long-distance bill.