(Continued from page 42)

• The new fund, which continues to come from a surcharge on consumers' and businesses' monthly phone bills, will underwrite the cost of building and operating high-speed Internet networks in places that are too sparsely populated to justify costly corporate investments. It includes a $500 million "mobility fund" earmarked to help build mobile broadband networks in areas where businesses won't invest so travelers can have continuous data coverage.
• The FCC announced this past week that CenturyLink Inc. has accepted $140,000 in Connect America Fund money to provide broadband in 180 locations in South Dakota. The company must complete two-thirds of its new broadband commitments within two years, and the remainder by the third year.
• West River Cooperative Telephone Company in Bison serves about 6,300 square miles of northwest South Dakota from Lemmon to the Newell-Nisland area.

The remote countryside has about one subscriber every two square miles, said general manager Jerry Reisenauer.
• Since 2003, West River has been rolling out fiber optic coverage to bring DSL Internet service to its customers, but uncertainty over the FCC's funding formula is halting expansion that would allow it to provide higher speeds in some areas.
• "We've put our construction on hold," Reisenauer said. "We're trying to understand more fully how the act will impact us."
• FCC officials say the Universal Service Fund had some flaws, allowing some companies to spend much more per customer than other providers and allowing some companies to undercharge customers for service.
• Genachowski said the old fund also supported multiple providers in some markets and none in others, and it sometimes subsidized one company in an area where there was an unsubsidized competitor.
• The Connect America Fund will expand broadband access "in a much more efficient, fiscally responsible and accountable way," he said.
• "What our programs do is level the playing field so that an investor can look at a rural landscape and say, 'OK with a lower population density and this investment from the federal government, now I can make a business work in rural South Dakota,'" Genachowski said.
• Former FCC commissioner Jonathan Adelstein now leads the agency that makes loans to rural telecommunications projects. Adelstein, administrator of the USDA's Rural Utilities Service, calls fund reform a "work in progress."
• His agency is "acting prudently by asking borrowers for financial reassessments based on the FCC reforms and will continue to work hard to ensure rural consumers have access to quality, affordable broadband service, no matter where they live,"

(Continued on page 44)