The Texas Public Utility Commission is pleased with how its...
The Texas Public Utility Commission is pleased with how its state USF fund has operated in the last year, according to a report submitted to the Texas Legislature Thursday. The USF fund is “fulfilling the fund’s purposes” and “the Commission’s…
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rulemakings and contested cases being conducted regarding the Large and Small Company High Cost programs will result in continued decreased costs for those programs,” the PUC said (http://xrl.us/bnxn8e). The Thursday report discusses the 11 programs the fund supports as well as talks about the process of determination eligible telecom providers and gives a history surrounding the fund, it said. A 2011 Texas Senate bill requires the PUC to evaluate the USF fund, it said. Programs that receive funding include Texas’s high-cost universal service initiative for big companies as well as for small and rural ILECs, Lifeline, Relay Texas and IntraLATA. Its disbursement in fiscal year 2011 was $426 million, a decline over the past half decade, according to a chart in the report. In fiscal year 2011, “disbursements from the Large Company Area High Cost Program accounted for 63 percent of the fund’s total disbursements,” the report said. “Disbursements from the Small Company Area High Cost Program to providers serving the small ILEC study areas accounted for 19 percent of the fund’s total.” The nine remaining programs comprise 17 percent, or $77 million, of disbursements, it said.