Puerto Rico Telecommunications Regulatory Board President Sandra Torres on Wednesday blasted the Legislature for ransacking the agency’s finances earlier this year, when it withdrew $10 million from a self-generated fund to balance the budget. The decision, she said, left the agency’s finances in a “precarious state.”
Two years after scrubbing out about 166,000 Puerto Rico residents who were misusing phone subsidy benefits through the “Lifeline” program, the Telecommunications Regulatory Board has asked the Federal Communications Commission to allow it to opt-out of the stateside database to continue doing the job on its own.
Close to 125,000 low-income consumers have been dropped from the list of beneficiaries receiving subsidies for their home or mobile telephone services through the Universal Service Fund after the Telecommunications Regulatory Board uncovered an alleged pattern of participants who were double- and triple-dipping into the pool of local and federal money, News is my Business learned.
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