Washington-The wireless telecom industry opposes funding proposals for the Clinton administration’s plan to link all schools and libraries to the Internet by 2000, a component of a sweeping $51 billion education package in the five-year balanced budget plan that the president calls his top domestic priority in his second term.
Clinton highlighted education in his inaugural address, State of the Union message and his budget, for which he received much praise.
Vice President Gore has passionately pursued the goal of connecting all schools, libraries and hospitals to the information superhighway by the turn of the century.
“Altogether, this is an unprecedented effort to connect the children of this century to the technology of the next,” said Gore.
As part of that effort, the administration wants the Federal Communications Commission to “act quickly” to discount by half Internet access rates offered to schools and libraries.
The GOP-led Congress and the telecom industry, though, are concerned about how the grab-bag of White House education initiatives will be paid for.
The wireless industry, for its part, fears not only that it will have to shoulder a disproportionate monetary load under a regulatory blueprint crafted by federal and state regulators, but that carriers also could be effectively barred from receiving Internet/universal service subsidies available to other telecom sectors.
Moreover, the wireless industry says it could be subjected to state regulatory guidelines that conflict with 1993 legislation that pre-empted most state oversight of commercial wireless carriers.
“To expect an industry that has already paid billions of dollars to the government at spectrum auctions to now have to take on this financial burden is outrageous,” said Jay Kitchen, president of the Personal Communications Industry Association.
That was Kitchen’s reaction when the National Telecommunications and Information Administration-speaking for the White House-floated the idea of offering free school-library Internet access under a so-called E-rate plan last fall.
Kitchen called that approach, which has since been abandoned by the White House, “nothing more than an unwarranted tax on an industry committed to building the next generation of affordable communications products and services for all Americans.”
Scaling back the proposal to a 50 percent discount has failed to assuage Kitchen and others.
The wireless industry wants the universal service definition narrow in scope to allow those who pay into the fund-paging, specialized mobile radio, cellular, personal communications services, mobile satellite and wireless LAN service providers-to be able to also tap into the telecom money pool.
Some proposed definitions of universal service are broad and technically sophisticated, enough so as to exclude most wireless carriers. If that sticks, wireless providers likely will pass on added costs to consumers.
Some federal dollars have been earmarked for Clinton’s Internet initiative. The Department of Educations awarded $14.3 million of a total $200 million in Technology Literacy Challenge grants to Illinois, Mississippi and New Mexico.
The administration has requested $500 million for the program in fiscal 1998.
According to DOE, school Internet connections doubled the last two years from 35 percent in 1994 to 65 percent today.
Despite government support, most of the education Internet links will be underwritten by the private sector. And the costs could be staggering, between $10 billion to $40 billion, according to NTIA.
The funding formula remains unresolved, being just one component of a massive regulatory proceeding to implement universal service provisions of the 1996 telecom act by this May.
“We do not offer universal coverage so we should not be paying for universal service. Small businesses should be exempt,” said Alan Shark, president of the American Mobile Telecommunications Association.
Shark said local specialized mobile radio licensees, having not upgraded to wide-area, cellular-like systems like those operated by Nextel Communications Inc., should not have to pay into the new universal service fund designed primarily to subsidize basic telecom service for the poor and for high-cost rural areas.
“The wireless industry is particularly well positioned to provide Internet access to schools,” said Tim Ayers, spokesman for the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association.
CTIA is spearheading an effort to provide elementary schools around the country with wireless Internet access. One hundred nineteen schools each have been equipped with a pico cell, computers and wireless modems, a package that costs about $60,000. The pico cell is connected to the school’s private branch exchange.
Ayers pointed out that wireless Internet access also has the benefit of not requiring drilling of holes in order to add lines in older schools. Many of those structures were built with asbestos, a popular building material for years because of its insulation and fire resistant qualities. But asbestos fell from grace after revelations that it posed a potential carcinogenic health risk when old or disrupted particles became airborne.
As such, the internal systems-underwritten by the wireless industry-sidestep the asbestos problem and are cost effective because they’re not subject to airtime charges.
The administration has proposed $5 billion toward school repairs.
Thus, the irony of the wireless industry being squeezed in Clinton’s self-described nation crusade for education is striking. Last year, when the school renovation project-championed by Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun (D-Ill.)-and the $1,500 college tuition tax credit were unveiled as stand-alone proposals, the White House looked to the wireless industry to fund them through auction revenues.
Now that those initiatives have been rolled into the president’s five-year, balanced budget plan, they are no longer dependent on particular offsets, like wireless auction receipts.
