PSC plan brings vital service to rural areas

Americans lose a million of them a day, and throw away another 426,000. An MIT survey revealed they were the No. 1 gizmo people hated the most, yet couldn't live without.

And, as of November, there were 3.3 billion of them on Planet Earth, or one for every two people.

You've probably guessed already, we're talking about cell phones, and you probably have the same love-hate relationship discovered by the MIT surveyors.

But telephone service can be a lifesaver in rural areas, and cellular service, when it is available, can provide that vital link. That's proving true in places like Africa, where it's much more economically practical to put up a few towers than string miles of wire to towns, neighborhoods and individual homes.

The same is true for parts of the Great Plains, where cattle and jackrabbits are more plentiful than people.

The Nebraska Public Service Commission, which has had a love-hate relationship with wireless service itself over the years, is acknowledging modern realities by making money from a phone surcharge available to build cellular towers in parts of the state with sparse population and poor cell coverage.

A Universal Service Fund surcharge of roughly 7 percent that has been collected for years traditionally goes toward building and maintaining landline telephone service in areas that aren't economically viable for phone companies.

The new PSC police makes about $5 million of that fund available each year to build cell towers in parts of the state with scant coverage.

Viaero Wireless, which has built three towers in McCook in recent years and dozens of others in the countryside, was the first to apply for some of the money planning to erect eight towers near the eastern portion of the Niobrara River and towns like Verdel and Lynch.

The Universal Service Fund was a good idea in that it helped subsidize an important service in rural areas that wouldn't otherwise have it. Expanding it into the wireless arena only makes sense.