Broadband Subsidy Enrollment Ends Today; Millions Are at Risk of Losing Internet

The Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) will freeze enrollment today (February 7, 2024) because funds are running out for this enormously effective federal program that helps people pay their internet bills. Already, roughly 23 million low-income households across America have received notices that the price of their internet service will go up by as much as $30 in a few months—and that includes more than 8.7 million households in the United States’ heartland region. Despite a bipartisan majority of voters supporting the ACP (62% of Republicans and 96% of Democrats), millions of households in the heartland will be at risk of no longer being able to pay for broadband internet service if Congress allows funding to run out. With one in every six American households set to have the cost of their internet service go up, Congress can and must renew the ACP. We have the tools to solve this 21st century challenge, if we can find the political will to make it so.

[Chhaya Kapadia is chief of staff for New America’s Open Technology Institute. Chris Sadler is a former education data and privacy fellow at the institute.]