A great opportunity for publicity, good will, and the off loading of thousands of ghost minutes - with the feds picking up part of the tab.
Clinton Plans Phones for Indians
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PALO ALTO, Calif., Apr 17, 2000 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- President Clinton, who played golf and hobnobbed with the dot-com wealthy during a weekend in Silicon Valley, is getting a look today at places and people who have been left out of the digital revolution.
...
Federal Communications Commission Chairman William Kennard, scheduled to join
the president to make the telephone service announcement in Shiprock, N.M., said
he expects the plan to benefit 300,000 Indian households.
It is disgraceful that we have a telephone system that is the envy of the world, but basic telecommunications services are not widely enjoyed by our land's oldest people,' Kennard said in a statement.
To pay for the program, Kennard said he will propose adding $17 million to an existing program that underwrites phone service costs for low-income people. That amounts to a 3.5 percent increase in funding for the program. Long-distance
phone companies, which pay varied subsidies to states to assist low-income people, would ultimately pay the additional costs.
Poor American Indian households already qualify for a discount, but Clinton administration officials said the cost is still too high for many. Nearly one-third of all Indians live in poverty, compared with 13 percent of the U.S. population.
...
On the Net:
Navajo Nation: navajo.org
Copyright 2000 Associated Press, All rights reserved.
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By ANNE GEARAN
APO Priority=r
APO Category=1151
(Public Company & Wall Street & Business & International & High Tech & Government
Community)
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