photo credit: Free SafeLink Cell Phones

Phone booths on every street corner are a thing of the past. With so many cell phones out in the market, phone booths have become almost extinct. So if you can’t afford a cell phone or home phone, what do you do? Rely on neighbors? One solution is a decades old federal program, started in the 1980’s, commonly known as Lifeline and Link Up, which provides low income people with telephone service. This federal program is funded by the little Universal Service Fee on phone bills (both land line and cell phone bills) and this year payments into the fund were expected to reach $1.4 billion. Read the rest of this entry »

photo credit: ET Panhandling to call home

Ever wonder what the “universal service fee” on your phone bill is for? The federal government uses some of that money to provide the Lifeline service to the poor. The program has been providing a phone line to the poor since the 1980’s, but now is expanding Lifeline to include cell phone service. Read the rest of this entry »