Qwest to the feds: Give us some money!

After being defanged for some time in the legal quagmire of being punished for operating illegally, the evil Q is making a comeback.

The boated, inefficient, yet predatory regional monopoly the began life as a well meaning fiber backbone company and lost its way by merging with an RBOC now wants more from the USF pot for the few remaining rural areas it has not already sold off. Few businesses have the luxury of demanding help from the taxpayer instead of solving their own problems, but such is the case with the telcos.

Qwest Communications International Inc. is asking a federal agency to obey a 2005 court order for reforms that Qwest hopes will give it more access to a pot of money subsidizing rural phone and broadband service.

The Denver-based telecommunications company petitioned the Federal Communications Commission on May 5 to follow a 3-year-old 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling ordering reforms in a program reimbursing telephone companies billions of dollars for serving rural areas. The agency hasn’t formally responded. (Denver Business Journal)

A the risk of repeating myself: The USF needs to end. It’s mission was accomplished some time ago and it has done very little to improve the availability of world class broadband access to lower density population areas. The reason of course is that it is now treated as the private taxpayer money pot for incumbent telco monopolies who have no motivation to improve service. It’s time to end the USF and introduce open market competition to the marketplace. Unbundling the local loop would be a darn good place to start since the taxpayer footed the bill to build it in the first place.