Edited Edupage, 9 May 1996

[jim bell]

At 10:08 PM 5/9/96 EDT, E. ALLEN SMITH wrote:
>From:	IN%"educom at 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 at pacifier.com