Technologie i telekomunikacja · 7.02.2005

Rural Health Care Support Mechanism

In this document, we modify our rules to improve the effectiveness of the rural health care universal service support mechanism. Specifically, in this Report and Order, we change the Commission's definition of rural for the purposes of the rural health care support mechanism because the definition currently used by the Commission is no longer being updated with new Census Bureau data. We also revise our rules to expand funding for mobile rural health care services by subsidizing the difference between the rate for satellite service and the rate for an urban wireline service with a similar bandwidth. On reconsideration, we permit rural health care providers in states that are entirely rural, such as American Samoa, to receive support for advanced telecommunications and information services under section 254(h)(2)(A).