USF Congressional Caucus Created

January 12, 2012

RTFC Capital Connections | Vol. 24, No. 1

In November, Reps. Don Young (R-Alaska) and Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) co-founded the Universal Service Fund (USF) Caucus, whose main goal, according to Rep. Young’s office, will be to provide Members of Congress and their staffs “with the resources to better understand the complex and rapidly changing world of 21st century communications services.”

Collin Peterson

The caucus’ first event was a well-attended Dec. 6 Capitol Hill briefing focusing on the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Oct. 27 USF reform order and its potential impact on the high-cost USF program. Additional caucus meetings and briefings are scheduled to be held on the other three USF programs: low-income, rural healthcare, and schools and libraries (E-Rate).

“The Universal Service Fund has a history of connecting rural America to communications services, and my hope is that this caucus will help ensure that rural voices aren’t left out of the process as the FCC moves forward to implement reforms,” Peterson said.

In a Dec. 5 letter to Young and Peterson, RTFC Senior Vice President Larry Zawalick thanked the congressmen for creating the caucus and noted that as the USF reform process is implemented, “it is important for the FCC to recognize and address the need for telcos to recover investments made in good faith reliance upon rules now in place and provide greater regulatory certainty to encourage future investment in rural markets.” Otherwise, the reforms “could precipitate the ironic risk of creating new ‘unserved’ or ‘underserved’ areas at the very time and through the very mechanism by which the FCC is attempting to solve such concerns in other parts of rural America.”

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