Ending the ACP will Limit the Internet’s Economic and Healthcare Benefits for Low-Income Households

What does solving the digital divide look like? The simple answer—getting more people online—is tempting, but it’s just a first step. Focusing only on home adoption rates provides a too limited perspective on the benefits of solving the digital divide. Consistency of connectivity is a key issue for low-income households—and this consistency is an important part of what the Federal Communications Commission’s Affordable Connectivity Plan (ACP) offers. For many households, the digital divide is not a one-time bridge to cross. Instead, online connectivity can be episodic. People may be unable to pay for one or more months of service, resulting in overdue bills. They may be reliant on a mobile service with a data cap. They may be unable to afford any monthly service and rely upon publicly available Wi-Fi or public libraries for connectivity. These challenges show up in the data: Nationally, 49% of low-income households are “subscription vulnerable,” meaning they have lost connectivity in the prior year or worry about whether they can afford next month’s bill. Being unconnected is a recurring condition that takes time and effort to manage. Doing away with the ACP will do more than disconnect many households. It will come at the cost of lost opportunities to address our most urgent problems.

[John B. Horrigan is a Benton Senior Fellow and a national expert on technology adoption, digital inclusion, and evaluating the outcomes and impacts of programs designed to promote communications technology adoption and use. Angela Siefer founded the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA) in 2015 and has been working in the field we now call digital inclusion since 1997. Blair Levin is the Policy Advisor to New Street Research and a nonresident senior fellow at Brookings Metro​.]