WASHINGTON-Two seemingly unrelated national policy actions highlight how regulators and lawmakers may be overlooking and underestimating the value of wireless technology in the new telecommunications paradigm that stresses competition and connectability.
Last month, the Federal Communications Commission created a new, $2 billion universal service fund to subsidize Internet access for schools, libraries and rural health-care facilities.
But the FCC left for another day the job of developing a funding formula to support basic telephone service for poor people and citizens in high-cost rural areas.
With new charges for additional residential and business phone lines hardly making up the difference of the five-year, $18.5 billion reduction in access fees paid by long-distance carriers to local landline telephone companies, it is unclear how or whether the FCC can achieve the administration’s goal of connecting schools, libraries and hospitals to the Internet by 2000 or even meet its statutory public interest obligation to keep basic phone service affordable for low-income and rural citizens.
The Personal Communications Industry Association sharply criticized the FCC for requiring paging companies to pay into the universal service fund, after top telecom lawmakers urged the agency to rule against it.
PCIA also is angry that the FCC allowed states to force paging and pocket telephone firms to pay into a separate universal service pool.
“The (FCC) made a mistake in letting the states come after us,” said Rob Cohen, director of congressional relations at PCIA. The trade group vowed to challenge the decision in court.
The Senate communications subcommittee, chaired by Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) will hear testimony tomorrow from PCIA President Jay Kitchen and others on FCC’s universal service decision.
More recently, the GOP-led Congress and the White House reached a five-year balanced budget deal. A casualty of the deal was Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun’s (D-Ill.) amendment to earmark $5 billion to repair crumbling schools around the country.
Clinton endorsed and tightly embraced the education initiative, which originally was to be funded by spectrum auction revenue, in his State of the Union address in January.
Cellular and personal communications services licensees will be forced to contribute to the new universal service fund but may have a hard time withdrawing funds to serve consumers and schools, particularly those in disrepair.
But `wiring’ broken schools presents a problem: asbestos.
The same could be a problem for older libraries and hospitals.
Wireless technology appears to offer a cost-effective and safe option for bringing the information superhighway and internal communications to the nation’s schools.
Thus, the dilemma: Policymakers refuse to fix deteriorating schools, yet want to connect students to the Internet via a universal service regime that may favor wired technology over a wireless alternative that could be safer.
The wireless telecom industry is making inroads, even as policymakers debate the funding question.
Just last week, House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) joined the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association in hooking up the 100th school to wireless technology.
The ClassLink program, underwritten by wireless carriers and manufacturers, enables students to access the Internet and gives teachers a valuable and flexible communications tool on school grounds.
