To those who say the US can’t “turn off the internet” because of all the different companies, looks like the one head company will be the FCC….

Plan Would Help Subsidize Access To Broadband

The federal government spends more than $4 billion a year, collected from phone bills, to subsidize phone service. Now, it’s considering ways to give those places more for the money: high-speed Internet connections instead of old-fashioned phone lines.
The Federal Communications Commission is set to vote Tuesday to begin work on a blueprint for transforming a subsidy program called the Universal Service Fund to pay for broadband.
The details the agency works out could have profound consequences not just for residents of rural areas who are still stuck with dial-up connections or painfully slow broadband speeds.

New FCC rules could also pave the way for cable companies to begin collecting from the program.

Although the Universal Service Fund was established to ensure that all Americans have access to a basic telephone line, the Internet is replacing the telephone as today’s essential communications service, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said.
“Broadband serves the same role in the 21st Century that telephone service served in the 20th Century,” Genachowski said. “So we need to modernize this program.”

The FCC envisions gradually transforming the High Cost program into a new Connect America fund that would underwrite the cost of building and operating broadband networks in underserved and unserved communities. Those networks would be able to handle data traffic as well as regular voice calls.
The FCC expects the transition to take place over a period of years, so that subsidies for phone lines would not disappear before an Internet-based alternative is available in an area.

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