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Re: Edited Edupage, 9 May 1996
At 10:08 PM 5/9/96 EDT, E. ALLEN SMITH wrote:
>From: IN%"[email protected]" 9-MAY-1996 22:01:14.77
>
>>REGIONAL BELLS WANT RATE HIKES FOR WIRING SCHOOLS
>>The United States Telephone Association would like to raise the average U.S.
>>monthly phone bill by about $10 over the next five years to pay for wiring
>>schools and libraries with new lines for phones and computers, and to
>>subsidize poor and rural customers. The proposal assumes an $11 billion
>>cost for wiring schools and libraries, with local phone companies paying
>>about a third to a half of that. The rest would come from a surcharge on
>>other services, such as cellular. "No single industry should be held
>>responsible for fulfilling this major goal," says USTA's president. "Each
>>has a role and should make a significant contribution to the national
>>education technology mandate." (Investor's Business Daily 8 May 96 A7)
>
> The "subsidize poor and rural customers" line makes me glad I don't
>have a phone line.
As might be expected, the math on this just doesn't seem to work out. If we
assume that the average school has 500 students, and 1/2 of the
telephone-using households have at least one kid in school (on average) then
1000 telephone households at $120 extra per year, or $120,000 per school, is
available to wire it. That's a HELL of a lot of wire!!! And that's just
for a single year. Why not just teach a few high school students wiring,
pay them 2x the minimum wage, and give them a good summer job doing the wiring?
As for subsidizing rural customers... Why not just install a cellular
telephone site in an area that's too dispersed for efficient wireline
telephones? And most of these people are probably already in an area served by cellular.
Jim Bell
[email protected]