Money for USPS in Broadband Plan

The U.S. Postal Service, which expects to lose $7 billion this year, could pick up more than a bit of spare change by helping the Federal Communications Commission and the National Telecommunications Administration conduct a national analysis of spectrum usage, according to the FCC's National Broadband Plan, which it recently sent Congress.

FCC said the national inventory of spectrum usage would require sniffing the airwaves with spectrum analyzers mounted on postal vehicles, and it put the cost at $15 million.

That won't come close to erasing the Postal Service's deficit, estimated to hit $238 billion by 2020, but, hey, every million bucks here and there counts when you are struggling to get by.