How USF Reform Might Affect Colleges and Universities: Some Early Appraisal

For many decades, telephone users served by commercial providers—including campuses—have paid surcharges on their interstate and international long-distance calls. The revenue collected by this “tax,” which was authorized by theFederal Communications Commission (FCC), goes into the Universal Service Fund (USF), which has subsidized rural telephone service and certain other equity-enhancing or socially beneficial services, recently including rural broadband Internet. The FCC appears poised to change how USF contributions are collected. A revised USF formula might be very bad, very good, or perhaps inconsequential for colleges and universities. Effective advocacy requires that we understand how different metrics might affect higher education.