The ACP Boosted Rural Adoption and Helped Keep the Subscription Vulnerable Online

“One more thing” is the line that Detective Columbo typically uttered in the eponymous 1970s detective series; it signaled that Columbo was on the brink of solving the episode’s puzzle. If Columbo were around today, the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) may have vexed him had he pondered its impact. Did it move the broadband adoption dial? If so, by how much? And is “moving the dial” the only metric to consider, given that Congress created the program to increase the number of low-income Americans online and make it easier for those households to pay for service—and thus maintain steady connectivity? In 2023, my Gain and Sustain report looked at what 2022 data could tell us about ACP’s impact. Using ACP and American Community Survey (ACS) county-level data enabled an apples-to-apples analysis of broadband adoption and ACP enrollment data. That report found that ACP played a vital supporting role in maintaining the surge in broadband adoption that occurred with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Counties with high levels of broadband adoption—and strong growth from 2019 to 2021—also had higher-than-expected ACP enrollment rates. ACP locked in the strong increase (4.7 percentage points) in broadband adoption nationally from 2019 to 2021. What does data from 2023 tell us? The story is much the same, as 2023 data again shows that ACP supports broadband adoption, even if overall growth was small from 2022 to 2023. But adding more data to the analysis—specifically, data on the broader economic environment people face—yields greater understanding of ACP’s impact and the places its impact is most noticeable. Think of insights from the new data as “one more thing.”