they were never laws, they were 'opinions' as to what meets the requirements. Just like 1998 was simply an opinion, at the time. Just like the FCC regulating VoIP, only in the last 6yrs. But never fear, once the FCC explains to the Tax-and-Spend-like-the-worlds-gonna-end members of congress how much tax revenue can be had by this new 'opinion'. It will become law just as easily. As a small business ISP who has been screwed over and over again by the major carriers, I see less down side to this than up. I literally was on a conference call with the ILEC (windstream) over slow speeds of a new customer I was turning up. Windstream had 3 or 4 execs along with engineers on the call, all claiming they did not have any idea why its slow. At one point the engineer thought he had muted myself and my client and stated, to one of their executives, that , per standing order, ALL 3rd party traffic was to run across a separate DS3 (45Mbps shared among all the other ISPs) instead of their GIGABIT fiber connections. So they got caught red handed admitting to deliberately screwing over the other ISPs, whom have no access to last-mile physical layers to the customers.

Up in verizon country they undermined the actual 1996 Telecom act that said they had to allow competing LECs access to their physical layer. They sued the FCC to ammend that it didnt apply to 'newer technologies'. So along comes FIOS service. Not only do they not allow competing carriers to order services on it, but once they install it they rip out every last inch of legacy copper to the facility, ensuring that the customer can NEVER switch to a competing LEC regardless of how badly verizon treats them.

yes they are. As a resident of this state I can assure you that my tax money is/was part of that $18million grant. I have no choice but to pay taxes, therefore I am being compelled to contribute to the erection of the place.

There are those who are actively working at making sure those skills are NOT taught: "We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills ... critical thinking skills and similar programs [which] have the purpose of challenging the student's fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority." --2012 STATE [Texas] REPUBLICAN PARTY PLATFORM. Unfortunately, these same people also control the largest school system in the country which determines the course materials used by many other school systems.

I am as shocked as you probably were.. the government rarely, if ever, lowers taxes even if they were to reduce their expenses by 50%. They would just find more shit to waste money on :-) Think about all that non-working security equipment that turned out to be vaporware for airport security. That was billions wasted for what they thought was an 'easy button'. I'm sorry but I kinda expect my government to at least be old enough and wise enough to have learned a loooong time ago that nothing in life worth having ever comes easy.

a couple hundred. btw PRI is 23 channels.. one channel is the D-channel signalling. This is how he is oversubscribing. I understand the idea of oversubscription, I run an ISP and ITSP. However, I am not taking taxpayer dollars. I am providing a service and use over subscription rations to balance the actual demand with costs. If the demand increases I am forced to increase my costs without an increase in revenue, this is the nature of the strategy. To get a CLEC license and then simply buy a PRI and oversubscribe to these rooms seems a lot shadier of a method when you are telling the FCC that you are providing more than you actually are in this situation.

its interesting that I have to charge my customers 15% of 64% yet when I look at other carrier bills like Nuvox (now Windstream) their $600/mo bill for various phone lines and phone packages; I only see a few dollars charged for USF. They are definitely cheating the system, perhaps through legal loopholes, perhaps not. Remember Adelphia? Just because the company is full of harvard business and harvard law graduates doesn't imply that they are using legal and extralegal loopholes. Sometimes they just cheat.

as far as the analogy that ATT is paying the 15%, thats not entirely accurate. Yes there might be a USF fee on my bill of $15, but I wouldnt go as far as to say if it were to go away that my ATT core charges would go up as a result. Its not coming out of their profits, they simply pass those costs on to the consumer. Ever see a Vonage bill? They lost a lawsuit to Verizon over a patent issued 20 yrs after the invention of DNS. Instead of that coming out of their profits, they charge the consumer an extra $5. However their website wont add this $5 to the price of their service when shopping around and comparing prices. I have seen first hand the way these carriers quote services. Its _amazing_ how a $400/mo PRI quote suddenly becomes $575 when you get your actual bill due to all the fees and taxes added. None of those were ever disclosed in a quote even thought they really could calculate a lot of this, at least to a rough estimate level. As long as Norlight or Paetec run around quoting $400 PRI, it will be unlikely that ATT raises their core pricing even at the demise of some of the taxes. There is still a race to present the smallest quoted price and then nickel and dime the shit out of people through hidden charges. I just dont see a big concern by them to eliminate the USF.

BTW those Federal Subscribe Line fee's go directly into their pockets and none of that is ever quoted in the price either.
http://www.fcc.gov/encyclopedi...

 

Bullshit, I am a small ITSP and I cannot get any USF money. Yet when I go around into government housing I see signs everywhere about 'need a land line? cant afford it?' and those signs are for ATT. They are giving them 'free' phone service and collecting $50 from the USF for that basic residential analog POTS line. The original intent was similar to those rural electrification subsidies. Those days are long gone. Now its just another nightmare like those medicare scams "If you have medicare and want one of these motorized carts, you cant be denied for any reason" even if you happen to be on medicare but just ran the Boston marathon.

That was its old use... havent you read up on the USF being applied to internet connectivity? It currently is only levied on interstate long distance. You do realize that in 2003 it was only 5% and now its 16.3% right?

I know of one company scamming the USF right now. He claims its all legal, but he sells phone service to nursing homes. Why a phone company should be getting $4000 a month to deliver a single PRI to a nursing home is ridiculous, but he charges for a dedicated line in each and every room of the facility and only drops in a single PRI. The concurrent call count for all the rooms combined is maybe 6 including the nursing staff using the phones. So to defraud the government for all these 'lines' that dont really exist is insane.

the roku screensaver is effective and simple.. its the word ROKU moving from spot to spot on the screen every 10 seconds or so. I see no reason to have anything more elaborate. A blank screen could be confusing when switching inputs and you want confirmation that its working without having to go find the damn remote.. seeing that floating ROKU tells me I switched over to that input, or it tells me my harmony remote is confused and i need to use its 'help' button to get it back in sync with the input the TV is really on.

you are already paying for this... SEVERAL times the goddamn major TELCO's lobbied congress for additional charges...

FEDERAL SUBSCRIBER LINE fees
UNIVERSAL SERVICES FUNDs
FEDERAL ACCESS fees

these all exist so the FCC can give ATT more money to build broadband to every home. Yes the USF predates the 1994 telecom act and later laws, but its constanty evolving. The FCC, right this minute, is considering USF charges on your internet connection as well.

the telcos got government permission to bill you and everyone else extra BILLIONS to build out an infrastructure that was supposed to provide 50Mbps connections to the homes. Instead they rolled out DSL (at the time 1.5mbps x 256kbps) which was a technology they already had and pocketed the rest. To this day you are still being charged these extra fee's for a buildout that was declared 'completed' years ago.

http://www.newnetworks.com/Sho...

unless they can search his cell phone while he is still driving, there can't be any imminent threat as the threat has been neutralized the moment the driver stopped his vehicle and surrendered to roadside interrogation. There could be other 'word trickery' employed about other things though. Using the patriot act to go after regular criminals is a good example of more police required to police said police.

It's been well documented that several planning parenthood organizations and ACORN affiliates were rubber stamped without questions as to how many times a day they pray and who were their donors. Questions they actually asked of other groups. In fact they didn't receive a single question. The tea party should have set up fake planning parenthood companies to get automatic free passes.

It's simply wrong regardless. Determining a non profit does not require questions about religious beliefs and/or submitting a detailed list of donors to then turn around and audit them also. This is the US version of the Schutzstaffel and not an accounting firm. There should not be a legal arm, not should they be purchasing hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammo. If someone is violating tax laws let the FBI handle it. It does not require the irs to be outfitted with hundreds of SWAT specialized divisions with tanks and body armor. Wake up before it's too late and you realize that you're a character in Animal Farm.

just like marital affairs, if they will do it with you, they'll do it to you. Never marry someone who cheated on their spouse.

repeal the 16th amendment! Id be for that.... considering nearly HALF of all the money they collect is spent on the IRS infrastructure its time to fire all those fucktards and start over.

they love the 2 party system.. they both keep selling the bullshit that the other party is entirely evil and they are angels of god. They both suck and ironically are both evil civil right stealing assholes. Where are the outraged persons who hated bush stealing civil liberties with the patriot act? Where is there outrage over the last 6years? fucking hypocrites is what they are... its a shame they can stand to look at their pathetic asses in the mirror every morning.