May 11, 2022
Today, the Senate Commerce Committee approved the FAIR Contributions Act, requiring the Federal Communications Commission to produce a study on expanding the base of contributors to include edge providers. The FAIR Contributions Act is critical to the future of the Universal Service Fund, a national commitment to ensuring low-income households, rural Americans and their health, education and library facilities have access to “advanced telecommunications services.”
The following statement can be attributed to USTelecom President and CEO Jonathan Spalter:
“With 25 years of digital life under our belts, Congress is right to revisit the Universal Service Fund. When our nation established the program a generation ago, it was to ensure every household had a telephone. Today, it’s to ensure universal access to broadband. This benefits a far wider universe of companies—streaming, videoconferencing, e-commerce, cloud computing and more—that largely do not contribute to the FCC’s critical universal service programs. It’s time they step up.”