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 FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler's proposal calls for changes in how money
is spent by E-Rate, the largest U.S. education technology program,
which is funded by fees Americans pay on their phone bills.
The subsidy, created in 1996, has helped connect most U.S.
classrooms and public libraries to the Internet, but rules have
limited how much money could fund broadband and Wi-Fi.
Wheeler's plan, among other things, would transition spending away
from older technologies such as pagers to devote more funds to Wi-Fi
and eventually focus entirely on high-speed Internet services.
"The new plan will make E-Rate dollars go farther by creating
processes to drive down prices and increase transparency on how
program dollars are spent," Wheeler wrote in a blog in June.
The FCC chairman's proposal does not seek a budget increase for the
$2.4 billion program.
The standstill budget has drawn fire from labor unions such as the
National Education Association and the American Federation of
Teachers, which said demand far outstrips available funding.
Republican FCC commissioners and lawmakers have raised questions
about Wheeler's proposal to redistribute current funding, and reject
any suggestion of a budget increase.
Wheeler plans to use $1 billion from the program's unused funds in
2015 and another $1 billion in 2016 for Wi-Fi, allocated to schools
and libraries based on their size. After that, streamlined
bureaucracy, better management and other changes would produce new
savings, according to his proposal.
More than 40 CEOs of large U.S. technology companies, including Mark
Zuckerberg of Facebook Inc and Meg Whitman of Hewlett-Packard Co,
backed Wheeler's plan in a letter to the FCC, calling it "a
significant, fiscally responsible step forward."
A similar letter came from 10 education groups, including the State
Educational Technology Directors Association.
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But Democrats and Republicans have raised concerns about how the FCC
plans to meet the new funding promises.
"It would be ill-advised to guarantee a permanent set-aside for
Wi-Fi, if that set-aside could end up cannibalizing funding for
basic Internet connectivity," wrote Senate Commerce Committee
Chairman Jay Rockefeller and Senator Edward Markey, the Democrats
who helped create the E-Rate program.
Top technology lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives,
Republicans Fred Upton and Greg Walden, worried in turn about the
pledges to increase Wi-Fi spending in future years being grounded
not in savings but in plans to later increase E-Rate's budget.
Democratic FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, a former
Rockefeller aide who had called for growth in E-Rate's budget, could
be the swing vote on Friday. The two Republicans on the five-member
FCC have said they do not agree with Wheeler's plan. Her office did
not respond to requests for comment.
(Reporting by Alina Selyukh in Toronto; Editing by Ros Krasny and
Jan Paschal)
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