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According to https://www.fcc.gov/general/universal-service-fund https://www.fcc.gov/general/universal-service-fund, it sounds like AT&T _does_ get the money for
by saghm 2y ago
According to https://www.fcc.gov/general/universal-service-fund https://www.fcc.gov/general/universal-service-fund, it sounds like AT&T _does_ get the money for this purpose, just not directly:
> Today, FCC provides universal service support through four mechanisms:
> 1. High Cost Support Mechanism provides support to certain qualifying telephone companies that serve high cost areas, thereby making phone service affordable for the residents of these regions.
> 2. Low Income Support Mechanism assists low-income customers by helping to pay for monthly telephone charges as well as connection charges to initiate telephone service.
> 3. Rural Health Care Support Mechanism allows rural health care providers to pay rates for telecommunications services similar to those of their urban counterparts, making telehealth services affordable.
> 4. Schools and Libraries Support Mechanism, popularly know as the "E-Rate," provides telecommunication services (e.g., local and long-distance calling, high-speed lines), Internet access, and internal connections (the equipment to deliver these services) to eligible schools and libraries.
It sounds like the government mandates that carriers like AT&T service communities in areas that would otherwise not be profitable enough for them to bother offering service to, and they help subsidize those customers with a tax on all of their customers. You might be able to make an argument that the tax doesn't generate enough revenue to offset the cost of serving those customers (I don't pretend to have any idea of either how much revenue this tax gets or how it compares to the costs of serving the customers they would otherwise avoid), but the money that the parent commenter is mentioning is quite literally spent on their bills, so I don't know how you can argue it doesn't end up going to AT&T.
- rayiner 2y agoYou’re overlooking that all the money goes into the universal service fund, from where it is redistributed to the carriers that service those high-cost customers. AT&T gets some of that money, but very few of its customers are high cost. Most of the money goes to different, smaller providers. (At the same time, the tax on AT&T’s service reduces AT&T’s revenues, like any other tax.)
- FireBeyond 2y agoRight, so it's proportionally allocated to providers based on their service to those challenging customers. I'm not sure what's being overlooked.
- rayiner 2y agoOP called the USF fee on his AT&T bill “compensation” to AT&T for maintaining landlines. That overlooks that the vast majority of that money is redistributed from AT&T and its customers to other carriers serving a small population of very high cost customers.
- saghm 2y agoThe USF isn't a final destination for money though; it's spent on those small population customers in proportion to the carriers that serve them. You seem to be arguing that because 100% of the money doesn't go to AT&T, paying that fee somehow isn't relevant to the discussion of AT&T serving those remote customers, but the amount they get is literally determined by how many of those customers they serve. By the same logic, other carriers collect the same fee from their customers that could get funneled to AT&T! I'm not sure if you're just trying to argue semantics about the fact that only part of the fee goes to AT&T or if you misunderstand how the USF actually works, but AT&T isn't disadvantaged at all compared to other carriers by this fee; they're all on the same playing field in terms of having to collect the fee and then only getting it back in proportion to the costs of serving the customers that the article discusses.