Maybe it’s the result of a second espresso I had this morning, but Google’s recent comment on the FCC’s Notice of Proposed Rule Making on Universal Service Fund reform doesn’t read like a typical carrier screed.
It’s their engineering culture. They won me over a little when they said that “IP transmission, in itself, is not ‘magic pixie dust’ that somehow creates a regulation-free zone.”
They are not ruling out regulation, suggesting that some interconnected VoIP is indeed telecommunication. And they implicitly acknowledge that universal broadband will require cash to pay for itself in low-service areas .
There solution, one of the possible approaches in the FCC’s suggested inter-carrier compensation methodologies, is bill and keep.
This is the FCC’s way of saying that rather than transferring monies between carriers through access charges, ISPs will keep what they collect from their subscribers.
This policy also means that the public will more directly pay for universal broadband. We do already on our wired and wireless phone bills, but I suspect not too long we’ll see the same charges on our DSL and cable bills.
The question for the FCC is how much of the burden will be on the public versus the provider.
Related articles
- FCC’s USF Rules: 228 pages, 1117 footnotes (technoverseblog.com)
- Google’s FCC Comment on USF reform (fcc.gov)
