Fund USF Programs Directly, AT&T's Marsh Urges Congress

Congress should directly appropriate the USF for broadband expansion, AT&T Executive Vice President-Regulatory and State External Affairs Joan Marsh blogged Tuesday. The entire USF system may be "dangerously close" to "crashing down" if policymakers don't find a way to fundamentally rethink how programs are funded, she wrote. She said "reform of the existing contribution mechanism is politically impossible" and would be a temporary fix at best. Stakeholders have debated levying fees on broadband or other communications services (see 2005270023). In addition to being politically problematic, "a broadband connections-based approach, which would collect against circuits or ports based on their capacity, is wildly complicated and difficult to define and implement," Marsh said.