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Originally Posted by Nurhisham Hussein
This amounts to giving a free ride to anybody willing to build a rural network, all at the expense of the consumer.
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I think you overstate this. Yes, USF compensation should take into account how well served a community is already, but if you think that we out here are drowning in telecom networks, you'd be very mistaken. In fact, there's just three: the wired network owned by Frontier Communications, along with Verizon Wireless and DCS Cellular One's cell networks. Frontier is, actually, pretty good: I get DSL from them despite being well past the red line. Verizon is, well, Verizon, and CellOne has decent coverage but terrible data service. The only reason I use them is because I'm a T-Mobile subscriber, and they're the only GSM network in reach.