The Math of USF Tax Increases: You Decide:

For more Information about this Bill and the current amendments, see Drew Clark’s analysis: http://www.drewclark.com/2006/06/three-drafts-of-stevens-bill.shtml

To summarize, under the current plan customers pay $42.57 for broadband, wireless, Long distance and local as compared to $141.27 under this discussion a 233% increase ---

The Wording in the Bill: 

Teletruth reads this section of the Steven's bill to encompass the entire phone bill - intrastate and interstate and international are now all fair game. --- thus the entire, local, long distance, wireless, broadband and VOIP bill.

''(C) REMOVAL OF INTERSTATE/INTRA STATE DISTINCTION.- Notwithstanding section 2(b) of this Act, the Commission may assess the interstate, intrastate, and international portions of communications service for the purpose of universal service contributions.

24 ''(B) COMMUNICATIONS SERVICE.-The term 'communications service' means telecommunications service, broadband service, or IP-enabled voice service (whether part of a bundle of services or offered separately).===

''(C) CONNECTION.-The term 'connection' means the facilities that provide customers with access to a public or private network, regardless of whether the connection is circuit-switched, packet-switched, wireline or wireless, or leased line.

Therefore, it is ALL services on all networks, and not just long distance but all distances.

Part two - So how much money are we talking about?

Let's use the FCC's supplied data. (2005 Report, released 5/05)

http://www.fcc.gov/wcb/iatd/lec.html

Local service was $441, Long distance was $122, and wireless was $492 Per household --- over $1000 dollars. It doesn't include broadband or VOIP.

"According to data for the year 2003 provided by TNS Telecoms, households annually spent $441 on local service (compared to $436 in 2002), $122 on long distance service (compared to $149 in 2002), and $492 on wireless service (compared to $417 in 2002), for a total annual expenditure of $1,055 on telephone services (compared to $1,001 in 2002)."

Let's use these as basic numbers, (though Teletruth doesn't agree with them for multiple reasons. For example, the others surveys presented in the report don't match.

If the customer is paying

Caveats:

We also need to note, this model does NOT include the various taxes and surcharges that are applied (inappropriately) on the USF charges… thus raising this number even further. And there are a host of caveats because we don't know if the taxes and surcharges are included in the expenditures. Also, items included in local services, from Local Number Portability to FCC Line Charge have been inappropriately taxed USF, which changes some of the numbers.

• Wireless has a 'safe harbor' for Long distance.-let's call it 30%
• Wireless 100% ---$492 -- $41 a month, LD is 30% which is $12.30, so it should be $1.20 a month or $14.40 annually
• Broadband: We're using the non-discounted DSL with an ISP. Under previous law, the DSL portion was a telecommunications service, the ISP portion would be considered an Information service. - so the USF was only applied to the telecom portion. However, under the current plan, the 'broadband' connection, which is the ISP and the broadband service are Broadband. We need to note a series of inconsistencies with the DSL USF charges we've analyzed. But for argument, let's just say that the split is 50-50 - ISP - Broadband.
• Broadband $1.50 a month for the broadband part - that's $18.00 today, vs. $36.00