cellular-news.com — U.S. taxpayers are getting stuck with the tab of US$13,345 per telephone line per year for federally subsidized phone service.The "gold-plated" waste and inefficiency under USF is so out of control that taxpayers actually could save US$1 billion or more each year by simply giving away at full retail cost satellite or cellular phone services
Jul 21, 2006 View in Crawl 4
Closed AccountJul 22, 2006
If it did cover the cost of building towers, we need to get on it. I have to drive through those rural areas anytime I want to visit my family. It'd be nice to get a signal on the road.
robdavyJul 22, 2006
What about the farmer who has a 8,000 acre farm in the middle of no where (you kinda are with 8,000 acres) and thus can't get a phone line? He's not trying to be "self reliant"...(not everyone who lives in the country is a self-reliant, vegetable growing hippy)
speedmasterJul 22, 2006
Another classic example of busybody statists not only wasting resources by using them inefficiently, but adding insult to injury by doing it with your money.
grizJul 22, 2006
The submitter needs to learn to summarize accurately. "U.S. taxpayers are getting stuck with the tab of US$13,345 per telephone line per year for federally subsidized phone service."This is not what the article states. It is "up to $13,345" which means it might be a single incident and not the norm.
ketemphorJul 22, 2006
We've gotten so used to economies of scale that it's not easy to understand how things can cost so much. When you're working with custom, one-time installations or very short-run custom production, the costs can be astronomical compared to generic, off-the-shelf parts.Not to defend government waste (I think they should mandate their engineers to standardize to off-the-shelf parts in applications that are not security critical), but, to make something up, getting a type AR72 regulator valve that was only ever manufactured for this one machine could easily cost tens of thousands of dollars since the manufacturer might have to shut down and retool their assembly line to make a new one.
heinousjayJul 22, 2006
Considering the amount of taxes we 'city dwellers' pay to fund our infrastructure as well as subsidize the country cousins, I'd say we have a much bigger and more substantive bitch.For example, I live in Northern Virginia. We as a region essentially subsidize the entire rest of the state outside of Norfolk, but we can't get vital infrastructure improvements we need here because the money all has to go somewhere else. If the taxes I pay right now to subsidize tobacco farmers (of all people) were instead sunk into the public transportation you so inneffectively excorciated, the economic benefits to everyone in the state (as well as the environmental and quality of life benefits) would far outweigh the lack of cheap corn.Frankly, I'd pay the higher price for food anyway. The money's going to come from somewhere, and this is one case where I'd rather decide instead of throwing into a pool that giant corporations suckle like a pig's teat.
heinousjayJul 22, 2006
September 11, 2001.Just saying. That was also the last time I had that message on my cell.
eridJul 23, 2006
The company I work for has a contract with a telephone company in West Texas to set up satellite based IP phones for some of their most remote customers. While expensive, it is far cheaper than trying to run copper or fiber out to each remote ranch house.
happyscrappyJul 23, 2006
This article is just dumb.First, as the article states, the money from the tax is likely not going to pay for rural phone service anyway. It's just a tax, to raise money.Then it makes the mistake of saying that since they can envision another way to manage this phone system, we could save this tax money. Doesn't that go against the first idea, that the tax has nothing to do with the service anyway?Finally, if the government didn't get involved here, the phone companies would hold people over a barrel for phone service. Companies love to charge "whatever the market will bear". There's no reason to think they wouldn't do so here (after hooking you in with a six month promotional rate).