This disgusts me as well.

So now the druggie has the phone to call his dealer and say he's on his way with his food stamp card to get his drugs, instead of just showing up.

Yeah they can have free ones when they stop using their welfare checks to buy new friggin' iPhones. Half these people already HAVE phones, better ones than a lot of people who have jobs and actually PAY for theirs, and now you want to just GIVE them to 'em?? WTF?? No one is entitled to have a cell phone; what about the rest of us who actually PAY for our phones and usage??

The Post article is referring to the Universal Service Fund which has been part of telecommunications in the US for nearly a century and was significantly overhauled in the Telecommunications Act of 1996. You can read more about the program here:

http://transition.fcc.gov/wcb/tapd/universal_service/

The short version is that every telephone customer (landline or wireless) pays a little bit every month into the fund. The money that is collected is used to subsidize telephone service for those who would otherwise not receive it. This does mean in some cases that poor people get phones for free (and have since your grandmother was in diapers), but a major part of the fund is used to build out network infrastructure in areas where it would otherwise be economically impractical. That used to mean small switching stations in rural areas, but today it means cell phone towers.

People will disagree about whether the fund is a good idea at all and whether or not the current objectives are worthwhile, but if you want to complain about where the money is going, far more of those dollars are paying for cell towers in Wyoming than subsidizing a few cheap cell phones in Pennsylvania.

So, F.I., how does this compare with the USPS, long a universally-priced service for the the entire country, but perhaps soon to be put out of business?

It's a "right" to have peace of mind? I just can't get over that someone actually made that statement! So who can I sue over all of the hours of my life I've spent worrying about paying the bills?

Crid, great question! The USPS was orginally established as a way to subsidize distribution of newspapers among the colonies. This is one of the reasons why Benjamin Franklin, a printer and publisher, was chosen as the first Postmaster General. In the early days, the cost of mailing a letter was prohibitively expensive for most individuals, but newspapers could be exchanged via post at no charge.

A major difference between phone and mail communications is that telephones are classified by the government as a life and safety critical service. You can imagine that sending a postcard to the fire department to let them know your house is on fire is not particularly practical. For a lot of safety applications (like reverse 911 messages to warn people of impending natural disasters) it makes sense to try to make telephones as widely available as possible.

Finally, the USPS has a monopoly on the delivery of mail (not packages) to US addresses. This is very different from the telecom market where there is active competition from multiple providers. The Universal Service Fund charges are applied to all carriers and are not necessarily distributed to the same carriers who collected the fees. For example, a small provider serving only urban customers might receive a small USF subsidy to provide phones to poor customers while a rural provider of similar size might receive much more funding from the USF for building and maintaining phone networks in sparsely populated areas.

I'm less familiar with the limitations on USF-funded cell phones as mentioned in the Post article, but traditionally landlines that were provided for free to customers under the USF came with very heavy usage restrictions and a tarriff structure that encouraged subsidized customers to use them very sparingly (often only for genuinely urgent or emergency calls).

Stop by more often

So what the point fi, they want a phone for emergencies, by they can buy a 10 dollar phone card with their welfare money. Thesis just another worthless distribution of wealth, as I guarantee these arebrje same people who don't hesitate to buy 200 dollar tennis shoes

In my neck of the woods, our local senior center collects old cell phones in partnership with a local cell service provider. The provider "cleans" the phones of all old data and hands them out to any senior citizen who wants one so they can call 9-1-1 if they need to, all free of charge. IMHO - that's what we should be doing to all public aid recipients who want free phones. Anything more than 9-1-1 comes out of their pocket not mine.

That makes me sick to my stomach. I do not own a cell phone (of my own free will) and I have plenty pieces of mind. The piece I'd like to say to these people requires the use of inappropriate four letter words. Cell phones are unnecessary and I hate to see my taxpayer dollars going to waste on something like this. How about cleaning up the school systems, or lowering illiteracy rates?

At this hour this doesn't seem to be about giving freebies to people. The 250 limit is probab;y the lowest increment the phone companies want to deal with in any context.

I'm late responding, so it may be that no one sees this, but just to close the loop, the money collected for Universal Service as part of the tarriff structure for landline and mobile phones goes to support the following four areas:

1. Lifeline / Link-up: Discounts on phone installation and monthly fees for low income consumers.

2. Rural cost reduction: Subsidizes the build-out and maintenance of communications networks in rural areas to attempt to equalize consumer costs in rural and urban areas.

3. Schools and libraries: Low cost Internet access to promote education (this may be relevant to Joyce's point above).

4. Rural health care: Telemedicine and remote diagnostics for underserved areas.

Full information from the FCC here:

http://www.fcc.gov/guides/universal-service-support-mechanisms

Again, gathering old cell phones and making them available to seniors and other poor people may be a great thing to do, but the USF primarily subsidizes the build-out of network infrastructure. Putting up a new cell phone tower costs real money and the population densities in many parts of the US are low enough that there would not be any coverage available without subsidies.

Again, there is plenty of room for disagreement about whether universal service is a worthwhile idea at all and, if so, whether or not the current FCC policies are effective in reaching the goal. Whatever your opinion, it is important to realize that the Universal Service Fund primarily subsidizes the operations of major telephone companies, not free-riding cell phone customers.