Boucher heralds broadband plan's call for changes to Universal Service Fund

Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.) on Monday promised to work with lawmakers to "enact legislation which will carry forward" the Federal Communications Commission's proposed changes to the Universal Service Fund.

Those reforms, released Monday as part of the agency's National Broadband Plan, would allow federal officials to devote some of the fund's money to broadband expansion -- a focus that current law still prohibits.

"It is essential that the funds be expended in a manner that helps achieve nationwide broadband deployment, and I look forward to working with the FCC to pass the comprehensive reform legislation that achieves that goal,” Boucher said in a statement.

As chairman of the House Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet, Boucher has long pushed for changes to that 1996 program, which guarantees money for the establishment of universal telecommunications services nationwide.

However, the fund is prohibited from using federal dollars to subsidize broadband expansion, even to areas still without high-speed Internet. Boucher has consequently promised legislation to address that oversight, which he said Monday would pair nicely with the FCC's new recommendations.

“Both the Commission’s plan and our comprehensive reform legislation would ensure the Universal Service Fund supports broadband deployment," the chairman said in a statement, noting he agreed with the agency's plan to pursue 100 megabite-per-second broadband connections for 100 million homes by 2020.

The top House member also praised the FCC for pitching proposals to auction off available D-block wireless spectrum as one way to pay for the creation of a nationwide, interoperable communication channel for law enforcement and first responders. The congressman noted in his release it would even be "appropriate for Congress to appropriate public funds to supplement" those auction proceeds.

Ultimately, it remains unclear whether other lawmakers will share Boucher's enthusiasm for broad swaths of the FCC's broadband plan, which Congress ordered in 2009 as part of its $787-billion stimulus. But he will have at least one key ally: Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who first pitched the idea of a National Broadband Plan to guide the FCC's work.

"This plan will lower and remove barriers to new competition in services, networks and devices," Markey said earlier on Monday in a statement, calling the plan "visionary."

"And it will enable state-of-the-art, high-speed access to educational opportunities, improved healthcare, increased energy efficiency and other national priorities," he said.

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