[Cialug] Iowa Municipal Telecom Legisation

[Michael Osten]

On Feb 22, 2005, at 3:35 PM, Jon Clemons wrote:

>  I see no reason they should intentionally prevent municipalities
> from at least considering options to do things themselves.

I don't agree with the wording of the bill...its just kind of sleazy.  
However, it will stop misguided person from doing something stupid with 
public funds.  (i.e. under 30 tax break comes to mind).


>
> On the issue of telcos having to spend money to bring services to 
> rural areas
> in which they will never recoup their costs I think that can be 
> debated.
> There is a charge on everyone's monthly phone bills that the Telco 
> gets to
> keep which is supposed to be utilized to build out infrastructure. I 
> personally
> would like to see how the Federal Universal Service Fund money
> has been utilized to build out infrastructure in the past 10 years by 
> the different Telco's.
> I know their have been many CLEC telcos utilizing the ILEC's 
> facilities and collecting
> these fees and never bother to aquire any of their own telco equipment.

Between the IUB's pricing regulations, and the requirement by law for 
the spending of the Federal Universal Service Fund I can assure you 
that it is not profitable.  I can't really comment on how the CLEC's 
use the fund as I don't know.
--
Michael Osten
http://www.bleepyou.com/~mosten/pgp.txt