Economic Impact of the Imposition of a Universal Service Fund Obligation on Cloud Services in the United States

June 2, 2025

Raul Katz

This report was prepared for CCIA with funding from Amazon Web Services. All of the study’s content, including its conclusions, are the independent outcome of the analysis conducted solely by the author and Telecom Advisory Services.

A new study finds that a proposal to impose Universal Service fund fees on cloud services would increase cloud prices, drive cost-push inflation, reduce cloud adoption, reduce national GDP, reduce each state's GDP, and decrease capex on infrastructure by cloud service providers.

Read Download Key Takeaways

Research

October 11, 2026

Freshwater Strategy UK Data Regulation Survey

Freshwater Strategy has conducted a quantitative survey of 113 senior decision-makers at British technology and data-intensive businesses, looking at both the compliance cost and broader economic o...

Digital Economy

Research

October 6, 2026

The Anti-Brussels Effect in Digital Competition Policy and the DMA’s Fading Appeal As a Global Model

The European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) is losing appeal as a global model for digital competition policy, with governments increasingly pursuing narrower approaches. Of the 14 jurisdictio...

Digital Economy

Research

September 23, 2026

The $103,265 H-1B Fee Could Cost the U.S. Treasury More than $32 Billion over a Decade

DHS proposes a $103,265 fee on every cap-subject H-1B petition, 78 percent of median H-1B pay, and projects $8.8 billion a year by assuming employers keep filing 85,000 petitions. DHS's own docket ...

Immigration

Research

September 8, 2026

The Supply Chain Costs of the FCC’s 2026 Covered List Regime

The FCC's 2026 Covered List regime now bars routers, drones, inverters, and robots made anywhere abroad, yet no agency has estimated the cost. This study finds domestic-only production-location det...

Digital Economy