Require large technology firms to fund universal service
What the document says“To put the FCC’s universal service program on a stable footing, Congress should require Big Tech companies to start contributing an appropriate amount.”
The universal service fund subsidizes telephone and broadband service in high-cost and low-income areas and is currently funded by charges on telecommunications carriers. The chapter calls the present approach the regulatory equivalent of taxing horseshoes to pay for highways.
What the document actually says“To put the FCC’s universal service program on a stable footing, Congress should require Big Tech companies to start contributing an appropriate amount.”
Big tech firms should help pay for this program. Congress should require it.
A fund helps pay for phone and internet in rural areas. Phone companies pay into it. The book says big tech firms should pay too.
The chapter records its own internal disagreement here. It states that conservatives are not unanimous in agreeing the contribution base should be expanded, and that some argue Congress should instead revisit the program's entire funding structure and decide whether to keep subsidizing service at all, with future funding decided through the normal appropriations process.
Read against the documents indexed here on August 26, 2026, and nothing was found that answers this. Public Law 119-89 is the only candidate about the universal service fund. It directs the Federal Communications Commission to open a rulemaking within 180 days establishing a vetting process for applicants for high cost universal service funding, requiring an applicant to show the technical, financial and operational capability to build what it promises. That governs who may receive money from the fund. The proposal is about who pays into it, and the law leaves the contribution base on telecommunications carriers unchanged. That is a record of a search, not a finding that nothing has happened: an act this site does not hold, or one that answers the proposal in words unlike its own, would not be caught by it.