The $7.3 billion fund, which has been a feature of U.S. policy for more than 70 years, subsidizes telephone service in rural and low-income areas. It also runs a controversy-plagued program called E-Rate that provides discounted Internet and phone service to schools and libraries.

Right now, only telecommunications services, including wireless, pay-phone, traditional telephone and DSL providers, are required to contribute a fixed percentage of their long-distance revenue to the multibillion-dollar fund. It had been unclear whether VoIP providers must also pay.

The same FCC order would also raise the share that cell phone providers must contribute to the pool, though it was not immediately clear how many consumers would see hikes or how much they would be. That's because the FCC raised the contribution rate for only one of three formulas that can be used by cell phone companies to determine how much they owe. If those companies choose to stick to the two unchanged formulas, their customers would likely see no additional fees.

"Certainly we're concerned whenever consumers are forced to pay higher government taxes or fees, but it depends on the carrier and what their approach is," said Joe Farren, a spokesman for CTIA-The Wireless Association, a trade group.

The new contribution scheme takes effect immediately, and any new fees would likely appear on customers' bills later this year, said Thomas Navin, chief of the FCC's Wireline Competition Bureau. He declined to speculate on the differences customers of each service may see on their bills, saying it would depend on a variety of factors and "there's not one typical scenario for me to paint for you."

Calculating what's fair

Pressured by consumer groups and the telecommunications industry, the FCC has long been contemplating changes to the USF contribution scheme. Critics of the current system say the means of calculating contributions needs sweeping changes. That's because the bulk of the money comes from actual or estimated long-distance revenues, which are steadily dwindling due to changing business models in the wireless and wireline worlds.

The FCC's decision Wednesday drew applause from the U.S. Telecom Association, which represents both large and small telephone companies.

"We applaud today's ruling for ensuring that all voice service providers are treated alike," Walter McCormick, the organization's CEO, said in a statement.

By one VoIP industry estimate, customers could owe as much as $2.12 extra on a $30 monthly bill because of the changes, said Jim Kohlenberger, executive director of the VON Coalition, which represents the Internet phone industry. Traditional wireline users would pay $1.38 on a comparable bill, while wireless users pay an average of $1.21, he said.

Those numbers are based on a "safe harbor" contribution rate, established by the FCC's order, that would require all VoIP providers to calculate what they owe based on the assumption that 64.9 percent of their total revenues represent long-distance calls. The safe harbor option for cell phone providers climbed to 37.1 percent from 28.5 percent under the FCC's order, but it remains far lower than the VoIP share.

The discrepancy has the industry scratching its head, Kohlenberger said. "The FCC's efforts on VoIP are like trying to solve traffic and energy problems by stifling the rollout of energy-efficient hybrid vehicles, while subsidizing SUVs," he said.

Cell phone and Internet phone providers would also have another option for calculating fees. They could do a complex analysis known as a "traffic study" to determine what percentage of their revenues are long distance. If the results prove to be lower than the safe harbor percentage, fees for consumers, in theory, wouldn't be as high.

Some Internet phone companies already contribute to the fund--albeit sometimes indirectly, via the telecommunications companies that provide pipes for their services. Vonage, for instance, already imposes a flat "regulatory recovery fee" for each phone number it issues.

Others urge caution

The VoIP industry wasn't alone in questioning the FCC's move. In a letter sent last week to commissioners, attorneys for the U.S. Small Business Administration urged the agency to postpone its action until it had done a thorough analysis of the economic effect on smaller providers.

Republican FCC Commissioner Deborah Tate said she would "continue to advocate a light regulatory touch on nascent services like VoIP." But she said she believed even more strongly that because the number of VoIP subscribers is growing rapidly, universal service obligations must be introduced early on.

The FCC made its move in its first meeting in months with a full slate of five commissioners. Each official emphasized that the move is merely an "interim step" intended to make up for an expected $350 million annual shortfall in the fund.

The reason for that gap is that, beginning in August, revenue from DSL services will no longer be included in the contribution mechanism. That's the result of an FCC decision last summer to exclude DSL from its definition of telecommunications services.

Some of the commissioners used the meeting to vow to conduct an even broader sweep that would incorporate all broadband providers in the USF contribution plan.

"I don't see with slam-dunk certainty that contributions from interconnected VoIP--which is, for all its impressive growth, still a nascent industry--and from wireless carriers...offset the funds lost by DSL's nonparticipation," Democratic Commissioner Michael Copps said.

Broadband's fate

The idea of making broadband providers pay has been proposed in Congress during this session but has not yet gone up for a vote. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin told reporters after the meeting that he had no timeline set for additional action but recognized the importance of more-comprehensive USF reform.

He reiterated that he would prefer to pursue a system in which a Universal Service Fund fee would be levied on all phone numbers, regardless of what kind of technology does the calling. In statements released Wednesday, both the National Cable and Telecommunications Association and the CTIA urged the commission to go ahead with that approach.

A number of proposals to change the Universal Service Fund remain on the table in Congress. The provisions that are most likely to proceed this year are included in the Senate Commerce Committee's sweeping communications bill.

The latest draft would instruct the FCC to come up with new contribution rules that are as "competitively and technologically neutral as possible," while leaving it up to the regulators to decide how best to meet that aim. It would also set aside up to $500 million per year to subsidize broadband services in "unserved areas." That measure is scheduled for a committee vote on Thursday afternoon.

Visa, one of the nation's largest issuer credit and debit cards, publicly acknowledged the trouble Tuesday in response to media inquiries prompted by Wachovia Bank's decision to replace an untold number of debit cards issued to its customers.

Charlotte, N.C.-based Wachovia issued the card replacements last week as an antifraud measure, said bank spokeswoman Mary Beth Navarro. She declined to explain the circumstances that triggered the action after several months.

Visa also gave out few details about the incident. Thousands of banks have issued millions of debit cards bearing the Visa logo.

In a statement, Visa said it is working with its member banks and authorities "to do whatever is necessary to protect cardholders."

Under Visa's policy, consumers aren't held liable for any unauthorized purchases made with their cards.

Visa's security headache is hardly isolated.

In recent years, a wide ranges of businesses and bureaucrats have fumbled away Social Security numbers and other sensitive information that could be used to tap into the finances and credit records of unwitting consumers.

In one of the most far-flung breaches to surface so far, the Social Security numbers and other personal information of 26.5 million U.S. military veterans was stolen last month when an employee took some digital data to review at home.

Visa has encountered security problems with other contractors besides the ATM processor that triggered the February alert.

CardSystems Solutions Inc., a payment processor used by both Visa and rival MasterCard International Inc., suffered a lapse that exposed up to 40 million credit and debit card accounts to potential abuse between August 2004 and May 2005. The thieves are believed to have grabbed data from a small fraction of those accounts.

Visa and Wachovia weren't even the only major financial services companies owning up to security breaches on Tuesday.

Equifax Inc., one of the nation's three major credit bureaus, said a company laptop containing employee names and Social Security numbers was stolen from an employee who was traveling by train near London.

The theft, which could affect as many as 2,500 of the Atlanta-based company's 4,600 employees, happened May 29 and all employees were notified June 7, spokesman David Rubinger said.

Employee names and partial and full Social Security numbers were on the computer's hard drive, though Rubinger said it would be almost impossible for the thief to decipher the information because it was streamed together.

"It would be very difficult to link this information and determine they were actual Social Security numbers in the first place," he said.

No other employee information was on the computer, he said, and there was no customer data on the computer.

Equifax's breach was similar to another one involving a laptop containing the Social Security numbers and other personal data of 13,000 District of Columbia employees and retirees.

That computer was stolen last week from the Washington home of an employee of ING U.S. Financial Services, according to officials with the company, which administers the district's retirement plan.

The laptop was not password-protected and the data were not encrypted, officials have said.

In recent years, compensation has been a hot issue with shareholders who have been bombarded with news stories about chief executives who are given multimillion dollar bonus and pay packages even if shares have declined.

For example, the chief executives of 11 of the largest companies were awarded a total of $865 million in pay in the last two years, even as they presided over a total loss of $640 billion in shareholder value, a recent study from governance firm the Corporate Library, found.

In 1965, U.S. CEOs at major companies earned 24 times a worker's pay. That ratio surged in the 1990s and hit 300 at the end of the recovery in 2000, according to EPI.

CEO pay is defined by the sum of salary, bonus, value of restricted stock at grant and other long-term incentives. Worker pay is hourly wage of production and nonsupervisory works, EPI said.

Wall Street economists had forecast initial claims would rise to 310,000 from an initially reported 295,000 the previous week. A Labor Department analyst said there were no special factors to account for last week's increase.

The report did little to shift prices of U.S. Treasury debt prices, which were slightly lower on Thursday. Benchmark 10-year notes traded down 3/32 in price for a yield of 5.17 percent, unchanged from before the report and just above 5.16 percent late on Wednesday.

"I would say this is largely a positive report. With jobless claims now moderating again, it gives us more confidence in the resilience of the economic expansion," said Patrick Fearon, senior economist at A.G. Edwards and Sons Inc. in St. Louis. "It won't necessarily come to a screeching halt."

After claims peaked this year at 344,000 in mid-May, the recent moderation of claims adds to evidence for the
Federal Reserve to justify another interest rate hike next week, Fearon said. The spike in new claims was caused by a partial government shutdown in Puerto Rico.

"We still seem to have a clear downward trend in claims this year. ... We have revised up our payroll figure for June to 175,000 from 160,000," said Michael Englund, chief economist at Action Economics in Boulder, Colorado.

"The market is pricing in a stronger June (payroll jobs) reading after some lean readings in April and May," he said.

The four-week moving average of claims, which smooths weekly fluctuations to provide a better picture of labor market trends, fell to 311,250 from an upwardly revised 316,250 the previous week.

The number of people who continued to file for benefits after receiving an initial week of aid rose 18,000 to 2.439 million in the week ended June 10, the latest for which that data is available.

Wall Street economists had expected continued claims to edge downward to 2.415 million from an initially reported 2.425 million the previous week. The June 3 week figure was adjusted downward to 2.421 million.