yes, it's a tax... not "borrowing from China"
now if you want to see some abuse of the system look no further than the free marketeers of capitalism
in 2008, during George W. Bush's administration, the FCC allowed wireless carrier Tracfone to join the program's list of approved providers.
Tracfone has aggressively gone after Lifeline customers. It advertises its "free phone" on television, pays commissioned street teams to canvas low-income neighborhoods for new subscribers, and signs customers up through a splashy website that promises "250 Free Minutes Every Month! Pay Nothing!"
Those tactics are paying off. Tracfone now has more than 4 million subscribers in its Lifeline program, called SafeLink, and collected $452 million last year from the program's subsidies. That's twice what it took in two years ago, and far more than any other provider. (The runners-up, AT&T (T, Fortune 500)and Sprint (S, Fortune 500), each collected around $274 million.)
The Lifeline cash is a substantial chunk of the $3.8 billion Tracfone generated last year in annual sales. The company is the American subsidiary of América Móvil, the Mexican telecom giant run by Carlos Slim, the world's richest billionaire. |
