Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
The FCC’s universal service tax is officially out of control. The agency announced yesterday that the “universal service contribution factor” for the 1st quarter of 2012 will go up to 17.9%. This “contribution factor” is a tax imposed on telecom companies that is adjusted on a quarterly basis to accommodate universal service programs. The FCC [...]
Federal Communications Chairman Genachowski previewed the universal service reform plan the commissioners are discussing in a speech today. The speech offers a masterful summary of the myriad inefficiencies created by the current universal service subsidies and intercarrier compensation payments. Most of the examples highlight plain old-fashioned waste. The universal service program collects billions of dollars from telephone subscribers, then [...]
A couple days before Congress announced a debt deal, half a dozen telecommunications companies filed a plan on July 29 with the Federal Communications Commission that attempts to resolve a much longer-running set of negotiations over big bucks. The “America’s Broadband Connectivity” Plan seeks to replace Universal Service Fund subsidies for telephone service in rural [...]
One of the reasons that so many of us here take issue with proposals to expand regulation of communications, broadband, and media markets is because we have studied the horrendous inefficiencies of economic regulation in practice. We oppose regulatory proposals not because of a “blind faith” in free markets, but because we understand that even [...]
May 28, 2012
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
