FCC Waste: $340K/year Subsidizes Obsolete Internet to Empty Buildings on Adak Island
U.S. phone customers pay over $340,000 annually through the FCC's Universal Service Fund to keep an Anchorage telecom connected to hundreds of vacant buildings on nearly deserted Adak Island, Alaska, providing obsolete internet service that residents cannot use.
The FCC's Universal Service Fund is bleeding ratepayer dollars on a subsidy that serves almost no one. On Adak Island, an abandoned Navy base where fewer than 100 people remain, the agency pays an Anchorage company more than $340,000 each year to maintain internet wiring to hundreds of empty homes and buildings. The service is so slow—often dial-up speeds—that even the few residents who could use it do not bother. This is not a rounding error; it is a systemic failure of oversight. The FCC has identified similar waste across Alaska, where telecoms collect subsidies for connections that do not meet modern standards. The agency's own rules require periodic review of subsidy eligibility under 47 U.S.C. § 254, but it has not acted to claw back funds from this or dozens of other unpopulated 'service areas.' The harm is twofold: every dollar wasted on vacant buildings is a dollar not spent connecting actual communities, and it entrenches an anti-competitive dynamic where entrenched providers collect guaranteed revenue with no performance accountability.
The humanitarian alternative
Congress and the FCC should impose a simple residency-verification requirement: no subsidy for a location that has been unoccupied for more than 12 months. Redirect the savings to a competitive grant program that funds fixed wireless or low-earth-orbit satellite broadband for the small number of actual households on Adak and other remote Alaska communities. This approach would preserve the legitimate goal of connecting rural Alaska—no one is arguing Adak should be disconnected—but would end the blank-check payments for infrastructure serving nobody. The FCC already has authority under the Communications Act to reform its high-cost support mechanisms; it needs only the political will to enforce basic eligibility audits.
Falsifiable predictions
What this entry claims will happen, and what data would prove it wrong. The Reckoner revisits these against current reality.
- The FCC will not initiate a proceeding to reform high-cost Universal Service Fund subsidies for unoccupied locations within 12 months of this article's publication.
- The Anchorage telecom company receiving the Adak subsidy will continue to receive the full $340,000+ annual payment for at least two more years without reduction.
Grounded in
- You Pay for Internet Service in Empty Buildings on Alaska's Adak Island ...
- US Government Spends KES 44 Million Annually Wiring Empty ...
- On nearly deserted Adak Island, you pay to keep hundreds of buildings ...
- Federal Communications Commission FCC 24-116
- FCC Internet Subsidies Flow to Nearly Empty Alaska Island Despite No ...
- The FCC Sends Billions to Alaska Companies Selling Slow Internet ...
- An Alaska reporter investigates billions of dollars in subsidies that ...
- On This Nearly Deserted Alaska Island, You Pay to Keep ... - NewsBreak
Original source — excerpted
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