FCC Urged to Require Wiring of Schools, Libraries for Info Age

The Clinton administration, weighing in on one of the most controversial issues of telecommunications reform, on Thursday urged the Federal Communications Commission to require the telecommunications industry to spend as much as $2 billion a year over the next decade to wire every school and library in the nation for the Information Age.

In a three-page letter signed by the secretaries of agriculture, commerce and education and in a separate 11-page filing, the administration tells the FCC that each school and library should be provided with a T-1 connection, a high-speed data line for which business users typically pay up to $2,500 a month. The filing also calls for schools to get such advanced services as videoconferencing at heavily discounted rates.

The proposals have no legal force, but they are aimed at giving the FCC a sense of the administration’s telecommunications policy. Under the sweeping telecommunications bill enacted in February, “basic communications services” are to be made more readily available to educational establishments, the poor and rural residents. The FCC is to promulgate rules covering these matters next year.

The White House is seen as an influential player in the debate because FCC Chairman Reed Hundt is a lifelong friend of Vice President Al Gore and attended law school with President Clinton.

Indeed, the letter came on the same day that Clinton, campaigning in Knoxville, Tenn., said his administration would push for $100 million in federal financing in 1998 to begin a five-year project to enhance the Internet’s speed and capacity and to make computer networking “as much a part of classrooms as blackboards,” in the president’s words.

Despite the potentially huge expense involved, telephone carriers and cable companies generally have been eager to wire the nation’s schools in exchange for regulatory breaks from the FCC and the promise of ready access to a market of school-age consumers.

In the last year, for instance, AT&T; Corp. has pledged $150 million to provide free Internet-access and voice-message services to 110,000 schools across the country. Cable giant Tele-Communications Inc. and several regional Bell telephone companies have announced similar campaigns.

But the cable TV, long-distance and local phone industries have been bitterly at odds over how to administer the government fund established to pay for universal communications services. The so-called universal service fund, whose money comes from long-distance access fees and other fees paid by phone users, is now largely under the control of the regional Bell companies.

The FCC has established a joint federal-state board to define universal telecommunications service, develop ways to finance it and ensure that schools and libraries are connected at discount rates. The board is to meet next week and announce its decisions early next month.

But the administration and others are calling for rules that will vastly expand the scope of universal coverage beyond simple telephone service.