Consumers' Research has formally asked the FCC to shut down the $4.5 billion High Cost Fund, putting the advocacy group in line with Starlink parent SpaceX, which has pressed the same case with the regulator.

In a September 30 letter to the agency, Consumers' Research Executive Director Will Hild argued that the universal service contribution consumers pay is now being used to prop up broadband infrastructure that already exists in the markets the fund was designed to reach. His core claim: ratepayers are taxed to subsidize networks that duplicative, unsubsidized providers have since built themselves.

"Consumers' Research therefore urges the FCC to discontinue High-Cost spending on redundant infrastructure," Hild wrote in the letter, filed in the FCC's docket. "The FCC should not create a new long-term High-Cost mechanism that would lock in another decade of the same tax for duplicative networks. It should not extend legacy support to locations that unsubsidized providers already serve."

The letter lands the Consumers' Research position squarely beside SpaceX's. The satellite operator has previously urged the FCC to wind down high-cost universal service support, arguing that its own LEO constellation and other commercial deployments can reach rural areas without legacy wireline-style subsidies. Both parties frame the issue the same way: public money should not flow to build second or third networks where the market has already delivered service.

The $4.5 billion annual program is the largest single component of the federal Universal Service Fund. It exists to keep carriers willing to serve high-cost, low-density areas — places where the cost of building and operating networks exceeds what subscribers can plausibly pay. The FCC has been weighing a long-running overhaul of the fund's structure and its contribution base, and Hild's letter directly targets the shape of any successor mechanism. His warning against "a new long-term High-Cost mechanism" is aimed at FCC staff and commissioners weighing whether to replace the current framework with another decade-long support program.

The submission also draws a line between two categories of spending that are often merged in the debate. Consumers' Research does not merely object to the size of the fund; it objects to spending on locations where unsubsidized providers already operate. That distinction — subsidized redundancy versus genuine coverage gaps — is likely to structure the FCC's file as it considers what, if anything, replaces the current High Cost architecture.

For incumbent carriers that draw High Cost support, the letter signals a growing coalition pressing for a smaller, tighter subsidy regime. For satellite and other unsubsidized entrants, it validates the argument that the market has moved past the fund's original design assumptions. The FCC has yet to act on the proposal, and the question of whether any replacement mechanism emerges now sits with the agency's pending reform deliberations.