6 major phone companies' rural broadband plan would make some rural places rely on satellites

Leading telephone companies' proposal to boost rural broadband would leave some rural Americans "consigned to satellite broadband," which is expensive and sometimes unreliable, Matthew Lasar reports for Ars Technica.

On Friday, AT&T, Verizon Communications, CenturyLink, Fairpoint Communications, Frontier Communications and Windstream gave the Federal Communications Commission a five-year plan to modernize the FCC's Universal Service Fund, part of which subsidizes standard telephone service with a tax on phone bills, to help bring broadband to "nearly all" rural Americans, The Associated Press reports.

However, "The telcos would be allowed to opt out of servicing high-cost areas under the guise of 'efficient network design'," Lasar writes. The companies say he government "should only provide funding in geographic areas where there is no private sector business case to provide broadband and high-quality voice-grade service."

While the FCC is expected to receive dozens of proposals, "the new plan is particularly significant since it has the backing of six key telecommunications companies that are some of the biggest recipients of Universal Service dollars," AP reports.