The FCC late Wednesday released its list of services eligible for...
The FCC late Wednesday released its list of services eligible for funding under the Universal Service Fund’s E- rate program for funding year 2010. The FCC, as expected, concluded that interconnected VoIP service and text messaging are eligible for…
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E-rate support. “We agree with commenters that the permanent inclusion of interconnected VoIP service increases the options available to schools and libraries to encourage meaningful communications among parents, teachers, and school and library administrators,” the FCC said. “Because interconnected VoIP is increasingly used to replace analog voice service, funding interconnected VoIP service is consistent with the concept of competitive neutrality.” On text messaging, the FCC found that it’s “similar to other E- rate-eligible services used by applicants to communicate, such as e-mail and paging services. … We note that we include text messaging as an eligible service irrespective of whether text message is ultimately categorized as a telecommunications service or an information service.” Among other policy calls, the FCC determined that video on-demand servers, Ethernet, web hosting and wireless local area network controllers should be eligible for funding. The FCC asked for comment on additional changes to the list.