USF Reform: What Does It Really Mean for Broadband?

In a 759-page document containing 84 pages of regulations the FCC, among other goals, attempts to reform the Universal Service Fun (USF) by morphing the $4.5 billion annual tax into the Connect America Fund that hopefully leads to increased broadband deployments. But will it?

This broadcast explores what reform means to broadband deployments in general, community networks in particular and to small ISPs and telcos. Our guest, JSI Capital Advisors Analyst Cassandra Heyne, has spent most of her life in the rural telecom business (her family owns a 100-year old rural telco in Iowa), and most of the past two weeks immersed in the FCC's reform order.

Heyne helps our listeners make some sense of what has been a complex and confusing process, and the resulting reform order. When all is said and done, inquiring minds should have a better idea of what $4.5 billion buys us in a couple of years.