WASHINGTON-There are areas of the country that are too rural, too remote and cost too much to serve for telecommunications competition to be viable, said the author of a new paper on universal service.
“There is a general recognition that there is a fundamental tension between the goal of universal service and the introduction of market-based economic principles in rural America,” said Douglas Meredith, director of economics and policy for John Staurulakis Inc. “Success at achieving these two divergent goals is illusory. Despite wishing and hoping for the alternative, the reality today is that there are areas in the country that are costly for one network to serve and doubly costly for two networks to serve.”
The Foundation for Rural Service, the non-profit affiliate of the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association, commissioned the paper from JSI. JSI is a consulting firm for small rural telecom providers.
The paper was released Monday at a Capitol Hill lunch for congressional staffers.
“The economic, demographic and geographic challenges rural service providers must overcome are well recognized and documented. To those traditional barriers now must be added the formidable, multiple-front attack on universal-service support,” reads “One Nation Indivisible: The Case for Universal Service and Rural Connection in the Broadband Age.” “We have reached the point that increasing demands and conflicting goals threaten the long-term viability and sustainability of the universal-service support system.”
To get over the disparity in economic potential between rural and urban America, the universal-service fund was created to allow rural Americans to have comparable services at comparable rates to those paid by people living in cities.
