Summary
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case challenging the legality of the FCC’s Universal Service Fund, which raises $9 billion annually to expand phone and internet access.
The 5th Circuit Court previously ruled the fund unconstitutional.
It held that Congress improperly delegated legislative power to the FCC and that the FCC unlawfully transferred authority to a private company, the Universal Service Administrative Company.
The FCC defends the fund as lawful, citing congressional authorization. A decision is expected by June, amid heightened scrutiny of federal agency powers.
It held that Congress improperly delegated legislative power to the FCC and that the FCC unlawfully transferred authority to a private company, the Universal Service Administrative Company.
So they’re gonna use that same logic to prevent privatization of the Postal Service, right?
anakin_padme_right.meme
the 5th circuit
Oh boy!
Here’s a reminder that packing the 5th circuit with extremist judges was a large part of the Southern Strategy.
If it makes no sense, it must be the fifth.
Not like the ISPs would really care anyways to expand. More pocket money to them.
Expansion is only profitable if there are enough customers to justify the infrastructure costs and people are willing to pay the costs for it.
They already got billions in subsidies for this very purpose.
I believe it’s more than half a trillion total at this point. We were supposed to have nationwide fiber since the 90s and we still mostly don’t have the country covered. WTF did they do with all that money?
It was invested in “emerging markets”… i.e. South American countries.Can’t find a source, so I’ll retract my statement:
Here are some articles talking about high level overview:
https://www.mackinac.org/blog/2024/why-government-funded-internet-isnt-happening-again
https://nationaleconomicseditorial.com/2017/11/27/americans-fiber-optic-internet/
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-book-of-broken-promis_b_5839394
I’ll see if I can find the sources, I’ve not looked at them in a while.
Paid themselves to “look into it” then expanded to one more house than before.
As a taxpayer I would like to know WTF the USAC is doing with 9 Billion dollars a year 'cuz were sure not seeing much of that investment.
I honestly can’t figure out what Congress is doing with these kinds of programs. There’s another one called BEAD (Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment) that was created in 2021 that had yet to get a single household connected to the Internet as of September 2024 despite having already spent $20 BILLION dollars!
So for Fiscal Years 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 the US Federal Government according to official figures spent a combined total of 46 BILLION FUCKING DOLLARS ((9x4)+20) and has nearly nothing to show for it.
Yeah, the courts needs to be looking into this.
Not sure how much but a big chunk of that money goes towards E-rate. Basically a piggy bank that USAC uses to subsidize networking and Internet connectivity technology across the country for K-12 schools and libraries. And let me tell you, if they didn’t most schools would be still be running extremely outdated networking tech and Internet connectivity. Which would mean American schools falling even further behind on technology literacy, greater security holes in the network, and much more inequality across education across the country.
Who’s to say the purpose of “Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment” is to connect houses.? Or, to put it another way, NASA has received billions of dollars and also hasn’t connected any houses. It’s easy to understand why: NASA doesn’t do that.
Who is to say that BEAD is trying to make last mile connections? If they’re not them your entire premise is wrong. It’d be like complaining that NASA has spent hundreds of billions of dollars and still hasn’t launch a single commercial passenger.
I live in a rural area and we’re seeing a pretty rapid expansion of broadband connections. We had DSL and cable in some places but now there are large fiber deployments to new neighborhoods and the DSL and cable areas are having fiber service made available over time.
Just using caps lock and BILLION doesn’t make a good argument. Nor does pretending that broadband expansion isn’t happening or creating arbitrary inapplicable standards for programs (“NASA hasn’t flown commercial passengers: WORTHLESS”).
As a taxpayer I would like to know WTF the USAC is doing
You should have just stopped there and started learning what USAC is and what it spends its money on; instead of screaming that the sky is falling because you personally don’t understand a federal program.
