FCC Chairman Genachowski gave a speech at FCC headquarters last Thursday outlining a plan to reform and modernize the Universal Service Fund (USF) and Intercarrier Compensation system (ICC). According to the Chairman, by updating the system, consumers will save billions of dollars per year in fees, while at the same time, as many as 18 million Americans will gain access to broadband services that aren’t currently available.

The new Connect America Fund would have the goals of:

1. Ensuring universal availability of robust, scalable, affordable broadband to homes, businesses and anchor institutions in unserved areas. The Connect America Fund would begin near-term build-out to hundreds of thousands of consumers in 2012, and would ultimately help get broadband to the 18 million Americans who can’t get it today.
2. Ensuring universal availability of affordable mobile broadband through a new Mobility Fund, which would be part of the Connect America Fund. Deployment of state-of-the-art mobile broadband would be extended to more than 100,000 road miles where Americans live, work, and travel. In addition to a one-time shot-in-the-arm effort to accelerate deployment of 4G networks in 2012, this Fund would provide significant ongoing support for rural mobile broadband.

In addition, the growth of the Connect America Fund would be constrained, keeping hundreds of millions of dollars in consumers’ pockets over the coming years. To help achieve this, Chairman Genachowski introduced a competitive bidding process among providers for obtaining universal service support, which would transition over time to a fully competitive system for distributing Connect America Fund dollars. This would be the first time competitive bidding has ever been used in the universal service fund.

The new Connect America Fund would also:

1. Immediately close loopholes like phantom traffic and traffic pumping, and other arbitrage schemes like CMRS-in-the-middle, where some carriers divert wireline traffic to wireless networks to avoid paying ICC. The plan would also provide greater certainty about compensation for VoIP calls that either begin or end on the public switched telephone network, ensuring symmetry in the treatment of such traffic.
2. Phase down ICC charges over a measured but certain multi-year transition path, starting by bringing intrastate access rates to parity with interstate rates.
3. Help companies transition by employing a tightly controlled recovery mechanism. The plan would permit some companies to receive transitional support from the Connect America Fund, but that support would be accompanied by obligations to serve the public as well as strong oversight and accountability.

The FCC will vote on the plan later this month. If the plan is approved, the FCC will start pushing money to companies that promise to build wireline and wireless broadband infrastructure, so that the 18 million Americans who currently don’t have access to high speed internet service will be able to get access in the near future.

In my opinion, once universal broadband service is available, the FCC will revisit the time do die requests that it has been getting from such major carriers as AT&T and Verizon. When that happens, landline phone service as we know it will die, and phone service will only be available through VoIP or Cellular channels.

Visit Calling-Plans.com for more information on cable phone bundles, conference calling and business VoIP phone services.

The FCC posted suggestions on their blog last week on what to do with your landline home phone and cell phone in the case of a major disaster. Most of the stuff is pretty basic and revolves around common sense, but since most of the people I know don’t have any common sense, I thought I’d re-post some of them here.

Of course, if you’re on the BART system in San Fransisco, then you’ll just be screwed, since they have taken it upon themselves to regulate whether or not you get to use your cell phone. I don’t want to get all hepped up over this, but when I read the article in Business Week by Susan Crawford, about the Bay Area Transit System turning off cell phone service last month, because they were afraid that cell phones would be used by people protesting the shooting of an unarmed BART rider, by a Transit Cop, it really pissed me off. (Who the hell gave them the right to mess with freedom of speech?)

But, I digress. Back to what to do in the case of a major disaster somewhere other than San Fransisco…

Here are the main ones that have to do with your phones:

• Keep a list of emergency numbers and the numbers of family members in your cell phone, or next to your landline home phone.
• Keep an ICE list on your cell phone and in your home phone; if it lets you keep a phone book in memory. (ICE stands for In Case of Emergency.)
• If you have landline phone service, make sure you have a non-wireless phone in the house. Landline phone service carries it’s own electricity, so an old fashioned plug in phone will work, but if the electricity goes out, a walk-around wireless phone won’t.
• Forward your home phone to your cell phone if you’re out of the area during a disaster, so that your friends and loved ones can get a hold of you.
• And, this is one I’m adding on my own, remember that if the electricity goes out, your VoIP phone service won’t work. (No Electricity = No Phone Service)
• The FCC has more suggestions on their list, but some of them reminded me that people can be so dumb, that I just can’t go on. (Like pulling over to the side of the road to Tweet… Really?)

Head over to FCC.gov for more governmental gems of wisdom. And, don’t forget to visit www.calling-plans.com every day, and send me $100 bills in the mail. (I figure if you’re dumb enough to drive and Tweet, you’re dumb enough to send me money in the mail cause I told you to… LOL)