Government regulators plan to overhaul the $8 billion federal program that subsidizes telephone service in rural and poor areas in order to pay for high-speed Internet connections. The Federal Communications Commission voted 5-0 Tuesday to begin drafting a blueprint to bring the federal program, called the Universal Service Fund, into the digital age. The fund, which is supported by a surcharge on long-distance bills, was created to ensure that all Americans have access to a basic telephone line. The FCC now wants to use the fund to underwrite the cost of building and operating broadband networks in even the most remote corners of the country. Those networks would be able to handle regular voice calls as well as data traffic.

If the FCC doesn’t act now to alter the purpose of the fund, “we’ll be left with a rickety, tottering, last-century system that did good things for plain old telephone service but hasn’t got a shot at taking us where we need to go in the years ahead,” said Michael Copps, one of the agency’s three Democrats.