From: jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>
Date: Sat, 11 May 1996 14:25:45 +0800
To: "E. ALLEN SMITH" <cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Edited Edupage, 9 May 1996
Message-ID: <199605102309.QAA13309@pacifier.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 10:08 PM 5/9/96 EDT, E. ALLEN SMITH wrote:
>From:	IN%"educom@elanor.oit.unc.edu"  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
jimbell@pacifier.com