U.S. Supreme Court looks poised to allow $8 billion for rural and low-income broadband and phone services

The Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C.
(Adobe Stock photo)

The U.S. Supreme Court seems likely to approve continued funding for an $8 billion program for broadband and phone service maintenance and expansion in rural and poor parts of the U.S., reports Mark Sherman of The Associated Press. In what is considered a "new test of federal regulatory power," justices are "reviewing an appellate ruling that struck down as unconstitutional the Universal Service Fund, the tax that has been added to phone bills for nearly 30 years."

John Fritze of CNN reports, "A conservative 'consumer awareness group' challenged [USF] as an unconstitutional 'delegation' of the power of Congress to levy taxes. What’s worse, the group argues, a private entity calculates the amount of money that must be contributed. . . . .The Supreme Court has not invoked the non-delegation doctrine – or the idea that Congress cannot delegate its authority – since the 1930s. It has, for decades, permitted delegations under certain conditions."

The court seem sympathetic to communities that receive USF dollars. Sherman reports, "Liberal and conservative justices alike said they were concerned about the potentially devastating consequences of eliminating the fund that has benefited tens of millions of Americans."

Should the conservative-led court uphold USF funding, the ruling will be a departure from its ongoing efforts to "rein in" federal agencies, Sherman writes. "The Trump administration, which has moved aggressively to curtail administrative agencies in other areas, is defending the FCC program."

Consumer Research calls USF "a 'nightmare scenario' in which Congress has set no limits on how much the FCC can raise to fund the program," Sherman reports. “'Predictably, the USF tax rate has skyrocketed. It was under 4% in 1998 but now approaches 37%,' lawyers for the group wrote."

Congress established the Universal Service Fund in 1996. Fritze explains, "Telecommunications companies contribute billions to that fund – a cost that is passed on to consumers – to pay for programs like E-Rate, which lowers the cost of high-speed internet for libraries and schools."

The court's decision is expected in June.

Landline use might be fading, but many rural residents still rely on it during power outages and emergencies

Landlines don't go down during power
outages. (Photo by A. Spratt, Unsplash)

When emergencies strike in remote areas, the unreliability of cell phone and broadband services can become a stark reality, which is why many rural residents want to keep their landlines. "The number of landline users has plummeted, and providers are looking at transitioning customers to cellphones or home telephone service over broadband connections," reports Heather Kelly for The Washington Post. "But for millions of people, newer alternatives are either unavailable, too expensive, or are unreliable when it matters most: in an emergency."

Because landline phones use copper lines to transfer electricity, "as long as a phone is corded or charged, it will work during a power outage," Kelly explains. "Landlines are unaffected by power outages, making them a necessary backstop in rural areas. Many of those same areas have inadequate cellular or internet coverage."

Enumclaw in King County, Wash., sits in
the shadowof Mt. Rainier. (Wikipedia map)

About a quarter of Americans still have a landline, but far fewer rely on it for daily use. "The largest group of people holding onto their landlines are 65 and older," Kelly reports. "Susan Reiter has had a landline in her Enumclaw, Wash., home since 1978. The power goes out multiple times a year, says Reiter, usually caused by fierce wind and other weather events. But the landline always works, she says, making it her best option if there's an emergency and she needs to call 911."

AT&T is one company looking to cut costs by cutting landline service. It asked the California Public Utilities Commission to "end its obligation to provide landline service in parts of the state," Kelly adds. "Hundreds of California residents called into CPUC public meetings. . . .The vast majority said maintaining landline service was a safety issue, citing power outages, wildfires and floods as times when their landlines are the only way to reach 911 or get information on evacuations."

As calling options evolve, replacing landlines as an emergency stopgap seems possible; however, getting people to trust newer technology may be tricky. "Apple added a satellite-connected emergency response service to the iPhone 14 in 2022," Kelly reports. "For people with a landline they've had for decades, the promise of new technology doesn't compete with the security of something that has worked for so long."

Loss of 411 kills another way to connect, but emphasizes the need for it; maybe we should start calling up people

(Photo by Rebecca Nelson, Getty Images)

Don't recall someone's phone number? Call 411, and get it. Not anymore. "AT&T announced late last year that 411, the operator and directory assistance service, would end around January 1, 2023," reports Keith Roysdone of The Daily Yonder. "It would no longer be possible to call an operator to place a call and no longer possible to reach directory assistance for information about names and numbers. . . . CNN reported that in 2019, about 71 million calls to 411 were placed each year."

That's 71 million phone numbers people couldn't remember, and possibly 71 connections people didn't make. But as Roysdone points out, "The need to know is timeless; within a single lifetime, some rural communities have gone from switchboards to fiber-optic internet." Roysdone notes that rural Americans needs to "keep up" because now, more than ever rural communities need to strive for the connections that were once made through party lines.

Dennis Hall, a telephone switchboard operator in California wine country in the 1970s, told Roysdone, "Being a rural area, we had a lot of farmers.” Hall added that a single line might connect three farms. “That was called a 'farmer’s line.' Someone would dial the operator and tell them they wanted Farmer Jones. All three lines could ring, but the operator would make the (ring) different. Farmer Jones would be two shorts and a long, but inevitably all three would pick it up."

Roysdone asked Hall, "How has the telephone experience changed for rural customers?" Hall responded, "The sense of community is severely diminished. There’s not really any sense of community.”
 
The lack of community can be hard to replace. "In the past year, I’ve been on a mission to pester as many people in my life as possible. The first victim was my editor, whom I abruptly asked one morning to stop messaging me about story ideas. Instead, I said, let’s talk the ideas out over the phone," reports Amanda Mull of The Atlantic. "I soon did the same thing to a friend who’d texted to discuss a job offer he’d just received. A few weeks later, when another friend texted me for New York City apartment-hunting tips, I asked her my new favorite question in return: Do you want to give me a call?"

Ah-ha. Now, here we go. "The phone call has lost its primacy in American communication. By 2014, texting had become more common for Americans under 50," Mull explains. "People currently in their 20s and 30s, in particular, have developed a reputation for being allergic to phone calls. . . . True to this generational stereotype, I sent my own mother to voicemail and texted her to ask what she wanted. . . . I ask forgiveness from all those whose voicemails I have not listened to. To fully repent, I must make clear what I now know to be the truth: Phone calls are good, actually."

Whatever would make you think that? "I wanted to hear my editor’s reactions to my story ideas and work them out in real time, not watch a 'Paul is typing …' graphic linger ominously for 30 seconds before I knew the verdict," Mull writes. "With friends, too, I wanted to rekindle the energy of live conversation. I wanted to crack a joke and hear someone laugh."

Mull points out: "Chatting on the phone provides the bliss of unreviewable, unforwardable, unsearchable speech. If you misunderstand something, there’s no day-long email chain correcting your error. . . Snapchat sent photos between users that disappeared 10 seconds after being viewed; talking to someone on the phone has provided the same freedom in verbal form since the days of Alexander Graham Bell." 

Roysdone writes: "Telephone users are happy to not share 'farmer lines' or 'party lines,' Hall agreed. And he noted that it’s possible to mourn the loss of the one-time telephone community and appreciate the improvements." 

Maybe it's possible to have the best of both worlds. Pick up the phone and see.

'Digital divide' between rural and urban shows no sign of disappearing as broadband gets faster

Photo: bradselectronics.com

The "digital divide" between rural and urban areas has not disappeared despite ever-improving technology. The latest data from the Federal Communications Commission and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration show that only 55 percent of people living in rural areas have access to broadband internet service, while 94 percent of their urban counterparts do.

Why does it matter? Broadband adoption can help improve the economy in rural areas, including increasing income, lowering unemployment rates and creating jobs, Brian Whitacre, associate professor and Extension economist at Oklahoma State University, wrote in USA Today.

Lack of access to a fast internet connection at school and at home can also set children living in poor rural areas up for failure. The Rural Blog previously reported that these children often suffer with important life skills that require online fluency: college applications, research for papers and job searches.

Technology continues to improve, allowing existing wiring to carry heavier loads of data. The federal government has historically tried to expand infrastructure that would allow for broadband access to rural communities. The "Connect America Fund" offered $10 billion in subsidies to the nation's largest telecommunication companies to offer service to more than 4 million un-served homes and businesses in 2015.

What classifies as "broadband" is determined by the FCC, and it changes fairly regularly as technology evolves. In the early 2000s, the FCC defined broadband connections as those that could transfer data at a speed of 200 kilobytes per second (kbps) in at least one direction, either downloading or uploading. That was about four times faster than historical dial-up modems (56 kbps).

In 2010, the FCC required connections to be five times faster still to be considered broadband. The minimum downstream (downloading) speed increased to 4 megabits per second (mbps), with at least 1 mbps upstream (uploading). Companies receiving Connect America Funds have to provide at least 10 mbps downstream and 1 upstream. But in 2015, the FCC again upgraded its broadband requirement to 25 mbps downstream and 3 mbps upstream, meaning that federal dollars funded service that already falls short of current requirements at the time of implementation.

Whitacre predicts the threshold will continue to increase, and rural areas will require the most work to reach it and stay compliant; their existing bandwidth is generally slower than in urban areas. Only 75 percent of rural Americans have access to fixed (not mobile) connections of at least 10 mbps download speeds, compared to 98 percent of urban residents, Whitacre notes. Only 61 percent of rural residents meet the current 25 mbps threshold for any type of technology, compared to 94 percent of city dwellers.

A major obstacle to rural broadband access is cost. It's more efficient for companies to install lines in high population areas because there are far more people to pay for use of those lines. Installing lines in rural areas is costly, and because there are fewer potential customers per square mile, they don't turn a profit as readily as those in cities.

Even improving existing wires in rural areas can be expensive. Fiber optic cable is used in new installs. In areas still served by older copper wires, though, sending data at high speeds for long distances can be a problem. Signals degrade after about three miles. To get data traveling longer distances to and through rural areas, companies must install signal-amplifying equipment called "access multipliers," which add to the cost of serving rural areas, Whitacre writes.

However, rural broadband advocates have had some good news the past couple of years with the continuing development of the Connect America Fund. The FCC set up several "Rural Broadband Experiments" in 2015, with 14 projects ongoing (10 fiber and four wireless). Whitacre said that he expects these experiments to provide some insight into the technological, administrative and logistical issues associated with funding rural broadband.

Even if rural broadband infrastructure were exactly the same as in cities, there would still be a "digital divide" in adoption rates, Whitacre noted because rural populations are older, less educated and have lower income.

Rural Texas town that changed its name for free satellite TV from namesake not all that happy

Dish Network receivers are everywhere
in Dish. (NYT photo by Rex C. Curry)

In 2005, a rural Texas town north of Fort Worth changed its name to Dish, as part of an experimental marketing strategy with the Dish Network. While residents enjoy basic satellite TV service for free, not everyone in the town is happy with the presence of the major company in the small town, reports Manny Fernandez of The New York Times.

Dish, which has a population of 200, and no restaurant, convenience store or school, was originally named Clark when it was founded in 2000, writes Fernandez. Most residents use Justin as their mailing address. "Dish doesn’t exist, in my opinion,” said Scott Bonfoey, a new resident who has DirecTV. “My mailing address is Justin, my school district is Ponder. What’s Dish?”

The name change has not reaped many rewards for the residents. It "did not turn the town into a household name, like Truth or Consequences, N.M., which named itself after the radio quiz show in 1950," Fernandez writes. "Some residents have wondered how they have benefited from the 10-year arrangement."

“It’s not a very publicized item,” said Wester Draper, a town council member. “You tell people you live in Dish, Texas, and they’re like, ‘Where’s Dish, Texas?’ Initially trying to get the service turned on, if you call them up and tell them you live in Dish and you get free TV, they don’t believe you.” 

The agreement expires in 2015, and though the mayor said he supports extending the deal, the town commissioners are in favor of changing the name back to Clark. (Read more)

Telco merger deals often have loopholes that allow firms to break commitments to rural broadband

Millions of rural Americans are still without high-speed broadband Internet access, even after large telecommunication companies promised to extend the service into rural homes in their coverage area after buying regional telecommunication companies. Consumer advocates say companies "have pocketed the profits from those deals while regulators have failed to enforce their obligations," reports Gerry Smith of The Huffington Post, formerly of the Chicago Tribune. About 19 million people still lack high-speed Internet access, and most live in sparsely populated rural areas.

AT&T merged with BellSouth in 2006 in an $86 billion deal that gave the company customers in 22 states. It stuck a deal with the Federal Communications Commission to extend broadband to "all residents in its combined territory," with at least 30 percent of wired Internet deployment, or DSL, in rural or low-income communities, Smith reports. AT&T says it has met those obligations, but it refused to tell Smith where services were extended. Advocacy groups say the FCC doesn't hold companies accountable for defaulting on their extended-broadband promises, but an agency spokesman told Smith the FCC "has and will continue to take action to enforce these merger commitments," and that the FCC believed AT&T had followed through based on a letter the company sent to the agency.

The FCC depends on companies to self-report compliance with merger conditions, and doesn't conduct its own audits. Some former FCC commissioners and industry experts say merger conditions often have loopholes that allow companies to comply without fully extending broadband to rural areas.

"AT&T committed to provide Internet service at minimum speeds that were hardly faster than dial-up . . . while pledging to deliver 'alternative technologies,' including satellite Internet, through as much as 15 percent of its territory," Smith reports. "At the time, satellite Internet was already available through nearly all of BellSouth’s turf, making AT&T’s commitment 'utterly meaningless,' said Dave Burstein, editor of the telecom industry publication DSL Prime." (Read more)

Topix seems to enjoy dragging small towns into the gutter; here's our invitation for it to get out

We reported early this year that local forums run by Topix were both revealing and creating problems for rural places; today The New York Times picked up on the story and got down to the nitty-gritty, with examples from several small towns. Kansas City-based reporter A.G. Sulzberger, son of publisher Arthur Sulzberger, went to the Ozark town of Mountain Grove and Dee's Place, a local hangout where "people are not happy" about Topix:

A waitress, Pheobe Best, said that the site had provoked fights and caused divorces. The diner’s owner, Jim Deverell, called Topix a “cesspool of character assassination.” And hearing the conversation, Shane James, the cook, wandered out of the kitchen tense with anger. His wife, Jennifer, had been the target in a post titled “freak,” he said, which described the mother of two as, among other things, “a methed-out, doped-out whore with AIDS.” Not a word was true, Mr. and Ms. James said, but the consequences were real enough. Friends and relatives stopped speaking to them. Trips to the grocery store brought a crushing barrage of knowing glances. She wept constantly and even considered suicide. Now, the couple has resolved to move.

Sulzberger writes that the concerns about Internet bullying and privacy are familiar, "but in small towns there are complications. The same Web sites created as places for candid talk about local news and politics are also hubs of unsubstantiated gossip, stirring widespread resentment in communities where ties run deep, memories run long and anonymity is something of a novel concept."

UPDATE: The story quotes Christian Sandvig, an associate professor in communication and media at the University of Illinois, as saying “Something about rural culture seems to make people want to have conversations in public.” But on the Huffington Post, Sandvig writes, “There are problems. Yet it's not clear to me that these are rural problems.” And the Daily Yonder says the Times should have noted Speak Your Piece, a feature of The Mountain Eagle in Whitesburg, Ky., in which anonymous, phoned-in comments are published after being filtered by the weekly's staff.

Topix has found "an unexpected niche in communities of a few hundred or few thousand people — particularly in what Chris Tolles, Topix’s chief executive, calls 'the feud states.' One of the most heavily trafficked forums, he noted, is Pikeville, Ky., once the staging ground for the Hatfield and McCoy rivalry."

That's about enough, Mr. Tolles. You and your newspaper paymasters (Gannett Co., the McClatchy Co. and Tribune Co.) are hereby invited to take your foul product out of rural America. And perhaps newspapers in towns where Topix draws many readers should ask themselves if that's partly because they don't turn over enough rocks and/or run vigorous editorial pages that inspire responsible debate.

Electronic emergency services at rural hospitals help patients, reduce transfers, save money

Electronic emergency services are bridging the gap between understaffed rural hospitals and specialist-saturated urban centers. One example is St. Michael's Hospital Avera, a 25-bed critical access hospital in Tyndall, S.D. It is one of about 60 rural hospitals that has signed up with Avera e-Emergency Services, a hospital-based telemedicine emergency support service.

From its operations hub in Sioux Falls, Avera emergency physicians like Dr. Brian Skow, right, and emergency-trained nurses help rural providers 24 hours a day, The Rural Assistance Center's Candi Helseth reports. They do everything from offer treatment advice to initiate diagnostic testing. "I didn't have any idea this existed," patient Leonard Hajek said. "The nurse pushed a button and just like that this doctor is on a TV screen talking to me."

The technology seems to be paying big dividends in patient care. It has reduced patient length of stay, patient transfers to tertiary-care hospitals and has saved money.

In Northern California, Sutter Health, the first health-care organization to connect a rural hospital to an electronic ICU, has likewise seen improvements in patient outcomes. "Deaths related to sepsis have decreased 28 percent system-wide and ICU patients' lengths of stay have decreased by 15 percent from 2007 to 2010," Helseth reports.

Rural physicians also appreciate the extra help and having access to a second opinion. "It means there is another doctor instantly available who I can consult and who is going to be helping if I need it. It makes me feel like I'm not as isolated practicing here," said Dr. Jill Kruse, family medicine physician at St. Michael's Hospital.

"Medicine isn't meant to be practiced in isolation," said Deanna Larson, vice president of Quality Initiatives and eCARE Services. "There are physicians who want to practice in rural areas but all of a sudden, they're everything to everyone and it's impossible to know every facet of medicine. They need access to peers for support. They also need time to sleep and see their families." (Read more)

About 70 police websites hacked; most are rural

An anonymous group "hacked into some 70 mostly rural law enforcement websites in the United States," leaking sensitive information about at least one ongoing police investigation, Raphael Satter of The Associated Press reported.

Dick Mackey, vice president of consulting at Sudbury, Mass.-based SystemExperts, told Nomaan Merchant of AP for a follow-up story, "The smaller the organization, the more likely that they don't think of themselves as potential targets. They're not going to have the protections in place that a larger organization will have."

The majority of the attacks were on websites hosted by Brooks-Jeffrey Marketing, a media hosting company based in Mountain Home, Ark., Merchant reports. "If Brooks-Jeffrey's defenses were breached, that would give hackers access to every website the company hosted," Kevin Mitnick, a security consultant and former hacker told Merchant. (Read more)

The attackers claimed their motive was retaliation for arrests of sympathizers.

Broadband access and adoption are identified as major issues in rural areas

Last week we reported that almost three-fourths of the 26 million Americans without high-speed Internet service live in rural America. Federal Communications Commissioner Mignon Clyburn pointed that out at the 2011 Rural Assembly in St. Paul, Minn., yesterday talked about the FCC's role in expanding rural broadband.

"It is unacceptable to me that so many citizens are being left behind. Rural residents need to have the same access to broadband services and applications as their urban counterparts," Clyburn said, citing data from the FCC Chairman's Rural Broadband Report that suggests a connection between broadband levels and and education and income levels.

Clyburn spoke of commission policies that promote broadband availability, but emphasized those efforts are not enough. "We also have to address the significant adoption gap for low-income and people of color," she said.

"The message Clyburn sent — one not heard enough — was that size doesn't matter. Yes, most people have broadband connections. But not everyone," Bill Bishop of the Daily Yonder writes.

To view Clyburn's speech, click here. To read the speech transcript, click here.

Rural telecoms ask FCC to probe calling problems

Four rural telecommunications associations are asking the Federal Communications Commission for an investigation into declining telephone service to rural customers. This request comes following an increase in reported calling problems from 78 in April 2010 to 1,811 in March 2011, D.R. Stewart of the Tulsa World reports.

"We are running into problems on call-termination issues in rural parts of the state," Bob Stafford, executive vice president of the Oklahoma Telephone Association, which represents more than 40 rural telephone companies, told Stewart. "A person will call from out of state to a rural area in Oklahoma, and the calling party hears the phone ring and ring, but the call is not getting to the local telephone company."

In the letter to the associations share stories of rural customers who learn of the uncompleted calls only after their friends, family, or business associates reached them through e-mail or cell phone and several "small businesses losing tens of thousands of dollars in sales because their customers can't reach them," Stewart reports. The letter says some reported calls never went through or the call rang several times with no answer. Some customers even reported "their caller ID devices display unintelligible information" or they received a false message about the failure of the rural local exchange carrier.

Unsure of where the problem lies, the FCC plans to start its investigation with the originating carriers, Stewart reports. "There are some suspicions that when the calls go from more traditional technologies to VoIP [Voice Internet Protocol] technology, there may be issues there, Bob Gnapp, director of demand assurance and network analysis for the National Exchange Carriers Association, told Stewart. "We certainly know the scope of the problem, where the calls originate, but yet it's difficult to say with any assurance exactly what is happening in the middle of the telephone route."

Joining the association in the request to the FCC were the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association, the Organization for the Promotion and Advancement of Small Telecommunications Companies and the Western Telecommunications Alliance. (Read more)