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America, here's what the FCC's Rosenworcel REALLY thinks about your broadband

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One of the FCC's five commissioners, Jessica Rosenworcel, says she wants to use both the 1934 and 1996 telecommunication laws to bring US broadband up to date.

The problem is that today's rules, here in America, are still focused on the telephone era, when really they need to account for the internet age. Sound familiar? Yes, but this is not net neutrality: it's about getting people onto broadband in the first place.

Back in 1985, which, Rosenworcel points out, was when Ronald Reagan was in power, the FCC's "Lifeline" program was put in place in order to help bring about the "universal service" clause in the Title II classification of phone lines (yes, that Title II). When telecoms policy was updated in 1996, it was expanded to include rural doctors and hospitals, and eligible schools and libraries.

What is Lifeline? A program for cash-strapped families that allows them to apply for a $9.25-a-month discount on their phone line or cellphone. This saving and three related programs are funded the by phone companies or the cost is passed on to other subscribers in their monthly bills.

But this Lifeline program can only apply to telephone lines – something that is ridiculous in the modern era, Rosenworcel claims, especially when "one in three households do not subscribe to broadband, and roughly seven out of ten teacher homework assignments require internet access."

She references a story in the Wall Street Journal earlier this year that revealed a lot of kids with parents who are making ends meet were doing their homework in McDonalds because the fast-food "restaurants" offer free Wi-Fi.

"A student's lack of internet access is a major challenge to integrating technology into our education system," she told the FOSI conference on internet safety in Washington DC, where she was picking up an award for her advocacy of broadband in schools.

"We need to update for the broadband era. So I'd like to take a fresh look at the Lifeline program and give all children a fighting chance for success."

It is not the first time there have been efforts to update the program (and the three other Universal Service programs). Congressional efforts in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009 and 2010 all ultimately failed amid the usual wild, and wildly inaccurate, rhetoric.

'I just have to persuade my colleagues'

Which is why Rosenworcel proposes a net-neutrality-style fix, with the FCC changing its own rules to keep up-to-date with the modern world, and leaving congressional dysfunction to the side.

She told The Register after her speech that the solution would be to simply give current Lifeline users the option to choose between applying their discount to a phone line or a broadband connection. "The two are coinciding anyway with things like voice-over-IP," she noted.

Such an approach would bring the cost of internet access within reach of millions of American families, boost technology efforts in schools and mean that kids don't have to hunt out free wireless networks to do their homework.

What's in the way of making the change? "I just have to persuade my colleagues," she tells us, referring to the other four commissioners.

Having spent the entire week swamped with net neutrality, the FCC might just welcome the chance to modernize its broadband policies without it involving a lawsuit or leading to protests or Presidential videos. ®

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