Wireless industry blasts bill blocking cellphone subsidies

The wireless industry is criticizing a bill set for a House vote on Tuesday that would make it impossible for wireless companies to get subsidies that pay for service for low-income people.

Wireless trade group CTIA criticized the proposed legislation as unfair because its members are paying into the Universal Service Fund (USF) which finances the Lifeline program providing subsidies for poor Americans.

{mosads}“This approach is inequitable and if it is Congress’ desire to end wireless provider access to the USF programs, that effort should be matched with a dollar-for-dollar reduction in what wireless providers pay into the USF,” the group’s president, Meredith Attwell Baker, said in a letter to House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

“It also ignores America’s inexorable shift away from wireline and toward wireless service, and the reality that many of those the Lifeline program aims to help, like the homeless, simply cannot be served with wireline connections,” she said. “CTIA recognizes the limits of the Lifeline program, but eligible low-income consumers, not policymakers, should choose where that support is used.”

House lawmakers are scheduled to vote on the bill, called the End Taxpayer Funded Cell Phones Act, on Tuesday evening.

The bill is being brought up under a procedural maneuver that requires a two-thirds majority for passage. It remains to be seen whether the necessary support is in place for the bill to pass, given that Democrats oppose most measures to limit the Lifeline program.

Conservatives are highly critical of the program. Some see it as a handout — it is derisively referred to as “ObamaPhone,” even though it predates President Obama — and say it is a target for waste and abuse.

The program was originally conceived to cover landline phone service. But it has been expanded both to cover mobile voice service and, more recently, wireless broadband internet.