Categorized under | Tags:
Who would have thought that there would be two very important votes happening on November 4?
One vote, of course, is deciding which man goes to the White House. The other vote decides whether or not “to spread the wealth” of wireless telephone service.
Next Tuesday, while those who didn’t take advantage of early voting are waiting in long lines to cast their ballots for president, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will be holding a vote of their own. They will decide among an array of important issues. One vote will be deciding whether or not to consider a proposal to cut funding to build new cell telephone towers in the rural parts of America.
What’s the big deal?
For the over 48 million people who live outside major city limits and do some of the nation’s hardest work and live in some of the remotest areas, not to have a tool at their disposal that the rest of the country, even the world, now sees as a necessity defies explanation.
According to the grassroots campaign, Connecting Rural America, the government set up in 1996 the Universal Service Fund (USF). The USF was a way to financially promote telecommunication services in rural and underserved areas of the country.
The USF is funded by us, the telephone consumers. Part of those inexplicable fees we find on our telephone bills, “interstate telephone charges,” contribute to this pool of funds. In turn, the money is doled out by the FCC to carriers to build the necessary infrastructure in those rural areas. Otherwise, it would be too cost-prohibitive for the companies to build it on their own.
As it stands, wireless customers contribute the bulk share of USF funds, about $3 billion annually. Yet, since 1999, about $25 billion of the contributions have gone to traditional wireline telephone companies and only $3.2 billion to competitive carriers which include wireless telephone companies.
Anyone can see that such a disparity in funding would limit what a company can build. However, the FCC wants to “reform” USF funding to carriers which could result in a 50 percent cut towards building any new cell towers in rural America.
This is a bad idea on so many fronts that it’s hard to know where to begin but the obvious starting point is that without the proper infrastructure in place, help would never come or come too late to those people who find themselves in life and death situations.
With stories pouring out of migrant farm camps of women and young people succumbing to heatstroke and passing out while doing the backbreaking labor, a cell phone that works literally means the difference between life and death for these people.
Or farmers, alone, out in the middle of their fields, who suffer a life-threatening accident would also have their lives saved by a cell telephone.
Stories are celebrated every winter of people whose cars have slid off icy roads into ditches or down highway embankments whose only lifelines were their cell telephones.
An April 2008 Harris Poll revealed something most people see everyday — more people are using cell phones rather than landlines. In fact, according to the poll, 89 percent of adults have a cell phone. Fourteen percent of adults only use a cell phone versus 9 percent who only use a landline.
When it comes to the younger generation, well, it’s not hard to see how they’re making their calls.
For too long, the voices of rural Americans have been drowned out by the needs of urban dwellers. It’s not hard to imagine how quickly the FCC would react if New York City, Washington DC or Chicago suddenly found there were dead zones within their city limits that prohibited people from using their cell phones.
In these uncertain times, it’s foolhardy to put at risk any segment of our population by denying them equal access to a service that is a necessity in this day and age.
Somebody needs to communicate that to the FCC before November 4.
