Phone a basic need

Miami Herald: As it considers changes to a fund that subsidizes phone service to rural areas and poor residents, the Federal Communications Commission should make sure it doesn't hurt the very people that the fund tries to help.
FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin said in a recent speech that the agency is considering changing the universal service fee -- a little-noticed fee tacked on most phone bills -- from a percentage based on long-distance usage to a flat fee of $1 or $2 for each telephone.
The change to a per-line charge would be regressive. That is to say it would take a bigger bite out of the budget of low-income users, many of them elderly and on fixed incomes, than the current system in which businesses and heavy users of long-distance service pay more.
'Universal access'
Congress established the goal of "universal access" to phone service in the 1930s, and the fund was created to subsidize service in rural and low-income areas where the cost of providing basic service is high. Today, the subsidy extends to Internet access for schools and libraries.
A coalition representing seniors and other groups recommends a hybrid of the current system that would protect the estimated 43 million U.S. households that make no long-distance calls or less than 10 minutes of such calls each month. A compromise plan makes sense.
The FCC should look for a way to update the USF fee without hurting the people it is supposed to help.