At 10:08 PM 5/9/96 EDT, E. ALLEN SMITH wrote:
From: IN%"educom@elanor.oit.unc.edu" 9-MAY-1996 22:01:14.77
REGIONAL BELLS WANT RATE HIKES FOR WIRING SCHOOLS The United States Telephone Association would like to raise the average U.S. monthly phone bill by about $10 over the next five years to pay for wiring schools and libraries with new lines for phones and computers, and to subsidize poor and rural customers. The proposal assumes an $11 billion cost for wiring schools and libraries, with local phone companies paying about a third to a half of that. The rest would come from a surcharge on other services, such as cellular. "No single industry should be held responsible for fulfilling this major goal," says USTA's president. "Each has a role and should make a significant contribution to the national education technology mandate." (Investor's Business Daily 8 May 96 A7)
The "subsidize poor and rural customers" line makes me glad I don't have a phone line.
As might be expected, the math on this just doesn't seem to work out. If we assume that the average school has 500 students, and 1/2 of the telephone-using households have at least one kid in school (on average) then 1000 telephone households at $120 extra per year, or $120,000 per school, is available to wire it. That's a HELL of a lot of wire!!! And that's just for a single year. Why not just teach a few high school students wiring, pay them 2x the minimum wage, and give them a good summer job doing the wiring? As for subsidizing rural customers... Why not just install a cellular telephone site in an area that's too dispersed for efficient wireline telephones? And most of these people are probably already in an area served by cellular. Jim Bell jimbell@pacifier.com