Federal Communications Commission	FCC 19-32


STATEMENT OF
COMMISSIONER JESSICA ROSENWORCEL

Re:	Connect America Fund, WC Docket No. 10-90
Today, we eliminate the universal service “rate floor.”  I support this outcome, because it will blunt the impact of a sudden price increase for voice service in rural communities.  
But for a moment, let me leave aside the rate floor and discuss the ceiling that has been proposed for universal service.  Before this agency is a rulemaking that would cap all our universal service efforts.  It flies in the face of this agency’s high-minded rhetoric about bridging the digital divide.  That’s because it threatens to cut off broadband in rural areas, limit-high speed internet access in rural classrooms, shorten the reach of telehealth, and foreclose opportunity for those who need it most.  It proposes unleashing a fight for support between connecting kids in schools and hooking up hospitals for telemedicine.  I hope that this agency changes course.  We have a statutory duty to support universal service.  That is why we take this action on the rate floor today, and it is why the ceiling that has been proposed is unacceptable.  

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