By Stephen Smoot, Moorefield Examiner
MOOREFIELD, W.Va. — As many West Virginia telecommunications companies and officials, elected and otherwise, continue to creatively develop ways to extend broadband service, under the radar of most, a case slowly made its way through the Byzantine recesses of the federal court system.
On the United States Supreme Court’s final decision rested the future of whether thousands living in remote areas of the state would ever see modern telecommunications extended into their homes.
Many more could have seen rates skyrocket.
Said Derek Barr of Hardy Telecommunications, the wrong ruling “would have been devastating for the state of West Virginia.”
The backbone of telecommunications service in areas both rural and remote comes in the form of a $9 billion Universal Service Fund. Incarnations of this date back to the New Deal era and the Communications Act of 1934 when the federal government reimbursed non profit telephone cooperatives for extending landline telephone service.
