Official FCC Blog

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These past few months have been especially proud ones for me at the Federal Communications Commission for one very simple reason: I have had the privilege of being part of a team that put the principles of smart government to work.  Yesterday, the Commission released a bipartisan Order comprehensively reforming the Lifeline program, the culmination of months of effort to clean-up and modernize this vital program.

Lifeline is a program that helps low-income Americans afford phone service by providing them with a monthly discount on their phone bills, averaging $9.25, paid for by our universal service fund. The program has been around since 1985, and over that time, the percentage of low-income families with phones has increased from 80% to nearly 92%.  But the program’s problems have also increased, especially after the Commission in 2008 made it easier for pre-paid wireless providers to participate.

The pre-paid services proved very popular, in part because the companies priced their plans so the Lifeline subsidy covered the whole bill, allowing them to advertise “free” phones.  Unfortunately, Lifeline’s rules were built for the kitchen phone, not the cell phone. As a result, some consumers got multiple subsidized phones – something that didn’t happen in the hard-wired wall phone days.   Some companies were enrolling consumers who weren’t eligible.  Some companies were collecting a $30 bounty every time they signed someone up..

Wednesday, at the first-ever Digital Learning Day Town Hall in Washington, DC, FCC Chairman Genachowski and Secretary of Education Duncan challenged states and the education and technology industries to get digital textbooks into the hands of all students in five years. Barriers to adoption of digital textbooks include: antiquated state procurement rules, lack of device and content interoperability, and connectivity costs. 

Six months ago, Genachowski and Duncan launched an effort with business and education leaders to help schools make the transition to digital textbooks. At yesterday’s event, this collaborative presented them with the “Digital Textbook Playbook,” a resource for schools making the move to digital learning.  As a next step, Genachowski and Duncan announced a meeting in March 2012 with education CEOs, state officials, and nonprofit leaders to advance the national adoption of digital textbooks.

The FCC has been working since the 1990s, via its E-Rate program, to connect every library and classroom in America to the Internet. Now it is time for the next broadband-enabled learning revolution; digital textbooks offer lessons personalized to students’ learning styles and aptitudes that enable real-time data and feedback to parents and teachers. Key facts:

Rural “call completion” problems are a serious issue that the Commission has been grappling with over the past few months.  Local phone providers in rural areas have reported an alarming increase in complaints from customers that long distance calls and faxes are not reaching them. Other complaints include poor call quality and incorrect caller ID information, showing perhaps an unfamiliar local number for a long-distance call.  It’s a persistent and ongoing concern affecting 80% of rural carriers recently surveyed by a rural telephone company trade association on the issue.

This can have dire consequences.  Small businesses lose customers who get frustrated when their calls don’t go through.  Urgent long distance calls from friends or family are misidentified on caller ID and not answered.  Prescriptions faxed to a pharmacy fail to transmit. 

The issue is complicated, but in a nutshell, the problem appears to be occurring in rural areas where long distance carriers normally pay higher-than-average charges to the local telephone company to complete calls.  These charges are part of the decades-old system of “access” charges that help pay for the cost of rural networks.  To minimize these charges, some long-distance carriers use third-party “least-cost routers,” which attempt to connect calls to their destination at the lowest cost possible. Sometimes, however, the calls appear not to be connecting at all.

The good news is that new FCC rules – which took effect on Dec. 29 – will provide both short and long-term solutions to rural call completion problems.  These rules are part of an Order the FCC adopted in October making broader reforms to the access charge system, called intercarrier compensation, or ICC.

On February 15, 2012, OCBO and the E-Business Now Consortium, the Small Business Administration, the Service Corps of Retired Executives, and the Maryland Hispanic Chamber of Commerce will jointly host a series of workshops on broadband tools for small businesses.  E-Business Now was created to ensure that small businesses develop the skills necessary to compete in today’s rapidly evolving digital marketplace.

This free event will take place at the Convention Center here in the District of Columbia.  We encourage entrepreneurs from the tri-state area and beyond to take advantage of this unique opportunity.  The workshop will explore strategies for boosting your revenues through broadband technology; creating a technology plan for your business; building the perfect website; tech strategies for improving cash flow; and one on one mentoring sessions on the latest broadband applications and techniques for small businesses.

Whether your business is IT focused or traditional brick and mortar, this conference will offer much needed insight on how the web can help you create a virtual online presence, expand your business footprint and streamline your administrative processes.

We certainly hope you can join us in February. If you have any questions or comments, please contact me at Gilberto.dejesus@fcc.gov.