E-Rate Scandal Continues

how people today just really don't care about misuse and abuse of public funds.

Shure, we'll see a couple news stories on a scandal like this, but then it will just dis-appear and everyone will forget about it.

*sigh*

What I would like to do is see all of those silly, mismanaged and probably illegally levied taxes on my telephone bill disappear; forgotten. It's ridiculous to have $6 "lifeline" telephone service to maintain dial-tone as a requirement for my DSL. Only to see it being inflated over 120% by various other little fees and taxes to the $15/month price level.
I haven't used my "voice land line" in years because of this nifty thing called "cellular telephone".
Then - to add insult to injury, FUSF fees atop my 6mb/606kb DSL that further inflates it...all to be literally tossed down the drain - or at least into the pockets of those that are charged with seeing that something is done right with the funds. Disappointing to say the least.

What? A government program showing incompetance with fund management? Say it ain't so!

Considering some of the other programs in place, we should be thankful that ANY money is going where it's supposed to go.

One wishes that Spitzer and the other crusading prosecutors would put half as much effort into combating public fund fraud as they do chasing headlines prosecuting executives.

After all, at least shareholders made a choice about handing their money over. Taxpayers don't even get that choice.

calvoiper

The Republicans wanted the telcos deregulated but didn't have enough votes. So they agreed to these feel-good programs like wiring schools for broadband and let the Dems stick the public with the costs. The telcos are happy; the politicians are happy; and the consumer gets stuck with fees and taxes and unmanageable programs that no one cares about except those who are milking the system for all it is worth. Ain't politics grand?:p

Are you f'n serious. You can't be blaming democrats/Clinton for this. I don't get it. When are people going to get that this is a one party system we are in. Unless you are ready to start kicking some political ass we get what we vote in.

Finally...someone who gets it...

And - the first quarter FUSF fee is 10.7% - and the proposed fee for the second quarter is 11.1%.

I believe it's time for Universal Service reform.

-Dane

Please remove the USF fee from my monthly bill if it's not going to be used as intended. Thank you.

For fraud?

cut out the "USF" and listen to the bs begin...I think congress should look into this (insert humor here)

They could fine themselves and put the money they would have otherwise wasted back in the Treasury. They spend so much of their time with their panties in a bunch every time a nipple shows up on TV that they have no time to do any important stuff. So much time was wasted with that Janet Jackson thing, that the money spent for payroll on 'investigating' the tits, taking phone calls for complaints and press conferences probably far exceeded the fine that was paid to the treasury. They could downsize and send some workers to India, go to 3 commissioners and rent out that building they are using. It could be great!

Another exposed case of mismanagement of funds. Now I can go back to counting the days until American Idol is on again.

*sigh*

...how the hell can anyone be surprised. If locals what this crap they should put a bond measure on the ballot and pay for it themselves or have special assessments locally like we have Mello-Roos here in California which for me doubled my property taxes to support local schools I don't use. Why do I and millions of others have to pay and pay and pay for their deployment because some small group of people chose to live in the sticks?

That's the trade off. Live in the city or suburbs and have these LUXURIES or move to the quiet sticks and do without or God forbid pay for the deployment yourself.

You never went to school?

Not public schools...they suck.

This bothers me too. Believe it or not, Michigan was listed as having the largest area without DIALTONE penetration (and yes, kids, it can be found in the LP). SBC, Verizion, and others choose to collect this fine money to put dialtone in these un-served, unclaimed areas, yet they STILL HAVE NOT PUT ANY COs IN THIS AREA! Verizion's solutions to the "you can't have dialtone for emergency services" problem? Over-powered ANALOG BAG PHONES with anntennas (prengels can-style) pointed to cell towers up to 30 miles away! Try getting broadband over that, let alone a 2400bps dialup connection. And to top it all off, SBC/Verizon were just granted permission to sell LD services, even though their provision from 1984 stated that they must have 100% dialtone penetration in order to get permission. Ah, if only I were in bed with SBC, life wouldn't be that bad ;0

I think the universal fund is a good thing, however, it is being seriously mis-used. Moneys not going to where they are supposed to, schools mis-spending the money, let alone the local governments mis-spending the money before it gets to the schools.. It just needs to be cleaned up.

Mabe we should call up some MCI accountants to help us out with this. I heard some of them were looking for a job

I was chatting with a friend last night about the connectivity of public schools neer me getting 100-Mbps pipes. What exactly are they needing this for?

If you look at the performance of California public schools...the answer would be nothing.

Personally I think it's a waste. I'm in my early 30's and we did just fine without internet access. Teachers were actually competent at the school I went to and taught the class themselves. Instructional aids included videos and field trips. It's like books and card catalogs are krytonite to these people.

There is no substitute electronic or otherwise for a good teacher. I think internet access in school is an unnecessary distraction from learning. These failing public institutions need to return to the basics and get their priorities straight. That money wasted on technology that becomes obsolete in just a few years would go a long way toward restoring other elective programs like music and even wood-shop which while seemingly unrelated have been shown to improve academic performance through critical thinking. Plus here in California they're wasting enough money. They already are spending 20% more per pupil than the average private school and have far worse performance. They want to fix crumbling schools, replace textbooks...they'd have more than enough money to do it if they were wasting it on this.

As the sys admin for a school I can answer that. The pipes are not just for surfing, in fact that is a small part of our traffic.

Distance learning is huge here. We have geography classes that hook up video and sound to a classroom in India, for example. They teach each other about their countries. Local hospital has doctors helping with biology classes.....it is very amazing and effective stuff.

To all of you that say 'I didn't have it when I was a kid'. The level of learning has increased dramatically. High school kids are learning things that many of us didn't learn until our Junior year in College.

For our district, there is no doubt that none of this would be happening without E-Rate.

Yep, lots of waste in the system. But not here. When we 'buy' something on E-Rate the contract we sign with the vendor clearly states if E-Rate does not approve this you will take it all back with a full refund. That is very common.

So, like all things. Nail the folks that abuse it, but they are a small minority.

I say we the people should CHARGE THEM for the money that they failed to properly manage. Hey, its our money I say we are entitled to either get it back or have them pay from their own pockets to get it to the schools.

for over a dozen school districts. Yes, as recently as a year ago, it would have been easy to commit fraud, but the SLD (the outfit that manages the erate process) has tightened up the application process considerably. Also, regarding the Chicago schools deal, they must have some sorry individuals in their administration in order not to have every classroom wired by now. All of the districts that I have helped are light years beyond what the article was talking about. All districts are rural, some with as a few as 150 students. If it had not been for erate, they probably would not have any networking to speak of.

I don't know much about this program, but I do understand its purpose. It saddens me that this program was abused. I don't know how much this abuse affects individual schools. I do know that my state has around a 4 students per computer ratio on average and that seems like a good number to me. I have gone to school in two different towns in different parts of New Jersey and both of them have high speed broadband internet access for the students and staff.

In the daily lives of students internet access has become a necessity for research and projects. I can't imagine schools without internet access and computers to use. I know they are out there. Someone needs to take action and enforce standards on this program so to limit or rather eliminate abuse and get internet access to all schools in the US.

I work for the Lake County Office of Education in California (we're definately one of the smallest county offices in the state). We use E-rate funding for about 46 T1 connections, and several pieces of hardware and maintenance contracts. It reduces the fee's to something attainable by public school's standard. But now I'm confused as to how this kind of thing happens. You wouldn't believe the kind of hoops we have to jump through to get these funds applied to our services.

And to the rest of you who say abolish this program, that would send our schools (at least around here) back to the dark ages. And if you don't have any involvement with public schools, then hey! what's that? Look over there!

*Blaze runs away*

Whether the FCC ever audits anything. They don't audit the phone companies, they certainly don't police the agreements companies sign with them when they merge. . . so why expect them to bother to manage the USF?

It should be cancelled.

One WISP in Colorado told me knows of cases where multi million dollar ski chalets are wired with USF money while the town where the real people live doesn't get access because it doesn't qualify as rural.

Take a look at the facts in the post that started this string. 122 audits were conducted. Those audits were usually of applicants that smelled fishy. Of those suspicious applicants, only one third had significant deficiencies. If you read those audit reports, those deficiencies include things like having vendor invoices which do not show enough detail for auditors to determine whether the services provided were eligible. Maybe the services were eligible, maybe not; the auditors couldn't be sure, so they wrote it up as a violation.

Oh, and thanks to all the noise about waste, fraud and abuse, the FCC will be doing 1,000 audits each year. Enough for you? Alas, these audits will catch lots of schools that made honest mistakes, along with a few dishonest schools, and opponents of the program will cite the huge number of violations as proof that the program is rife with fraud.

The program certainly has a lot of problems, but it really has done a lot of good in bringing technology into the classroom.

I forgot which one's it was or what state but I think it was Michigan. When a couple of wireless companies found out that the money they were paying into the E911 program was getting used for something other then telecom use, they stopped paying into it. The money was to help local PSAPs off set the cost to move to the E911 system. But Michigan used the money for something else and planed on doing it again. I don't know what the end result was but if fee's that they ARE required to pay are used for something other then it's intended use, they should stop funding it.