5. One is financed by the government out of your taxes and is merely an accounting formality much like a customer ID number. The other is funded by a corporation that has no government funding and must support itself not unlike most businesses and the number is a critical infrastructure identifier something like an NPA-NXX.
Technically, the USF is an industry-funded fund (sic? redundant). The SLC is an independent not-for-profit entity (gosh sounds like ARIN). The Universal Service Administrative Company, a subsidary of NECA collects the USF fees and distributes them to the various funds. The money does not come from the US Treasury, nor even 'taxpayers.' The USF money comes from subscribers of interstate telecommunications services, much like the money for ARIN comes from the subscribers of IP addresses and AS numbers. I couldn't find a budget on the ARIN website; but I wouldn't be pointing to the SLC as an example of a well-run organization. Even ARIN at its worst doesn't match the SLC for insanity. (Yes, Kim that was a compliment). Maybe if the president of ARIN was paid $300,000/year like the president of the SLC, things would be different. -- Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO Affiliation given for identification not representation