Rural regions will face bigger telecom and broadband...
Rural regions will face bigger telecom and broadband funding challenges and states must act accordingly, said the professional services firm Balhoff & Williams in a 45-page white paper (http://bit.ly/1a51Qor) released Tuesday. “State legislators and public service commissions have a short…
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period to affirm their long-standing commitment to terrestrial rural voice and broadband networks, and it will be difficult to recover if the networks fail or falter,” the firm said in a news release (http://bit.ly/ZK3ZBv). “The ultimate concern is the potential damage to local economies, emergency preparedness, and social environments in rural regions.” The paper highlights the importance of state USF funds, pointing to communities’ need for broadband access as well as declining federal support. The paper details the history of support companies receive and lays out the stakes associated with the funding challenges: “States must adjust their approach to funding service in high-cost areas (which historically have accounted for up to 75 percent of the total funding need) or risk leaving thousands of communities and millions of households without adequate broadband and voice services,” the document said, saying states must understand the urgency and many aspects of providing universal service. This challenge makes it more important for states to supplement funding with their own USFs and begin analyses immediately, Balhoff & Williams said. State commissioners Larry Landis of Indiana and Jim Cawley of Pennsylvania praised the paper’s findings, in statements. The paper “underlines the importance of State USF mechanisms for supporting the redefined concept of universal service for all Americans that now includes retail broadband access services, and for meaningfully sustaining the carrier of last resort (COLR) obligations of wireline ILECs in general and rural ILECs in particular,” Cawley said.