Testimony | Assessing the State of the Universal Service Fund

Chair Cantwell, Ranking Member Cruz, Chair Luján, Ranking Member Thune, and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you at today’s hearing on the state of universal service. I am a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a professor at Boston College Law School, where I teach and write about telecommunications and internet law.

I applaud the subcommittee’s focus on this issue. The Universal Service Fund is an important program with a laudable mission. The basic tenet of universal service—that the government should assist those who struggle to access the network—has long been a cornerstone of American telecommunications policy. One of the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) primary obligations is to “make available, so far as possible, to all the people of the United States…a rapid, efficient, Nation-wide, and world-wide wire and radio communication service with adequate facilities at reasonable charges.”¹ This mission takes on greater significance in the digital age, when internet access is important for not just communication but also employment, commerce, education, and countless other activities.

Unfortunately, while the Universal Service Fund’s goals are sound, there is significant room for improvement regarding modernizing these programs for the digital age. This is particularly true of Lifeline, which has been repeatedly criticized as ineffective, incomplete, and unnecessarily paternalistic. The committee should also consider re-evaluating E-Rate in light of the mixed evidence of its effectiveness. Through trial and error, the High Cost Fund has made a more successful transition to the broadband era and has yielded important lessons that the program should retain going forward.

Read the full testimony here.

¹47 U.S.C. § 151.