FCC chairman supports subsidizing rural broadband

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin said this week that high-speed Internet service for rural areas needs to be subsidized, as part of the "universal service" that is an established federal policy for telecommunications.

Martin said at a conference in Chicago that broadband policies should be changed so rural consumers could receive urban-level services, "but there's a limited amount of funding to do this." He called for "a policy that is technologically neutral," and said the FCC should move away from "subsidizing multiple voice carriers in rural areas" to subsidizing broadband, Gene J. Koprowski reported for Technology Daily. (Read more)