Ensuring High-Speed Internet is Within Reach for Every Family in America

Charter understands better than most the struggles people face in getting and staying connected: it’s our job and these customers are our family, friends, and neighbors. When a global pandemic pushed so much of everyday life online, the gap between those with and without connectivity was exposed, and many realized for the first time the impossible situation faced by families who either didn’t have internet service available or could not afford service. We knew Charter had a unique and outsized opportunity to be part of the solution, including through participation in some government support programs: 

• Increasing Internet Availability: Charter is investing more than $4 billion in private funding alongside government support in our rural construction initiative, which is bringing gigabit-speed broadband to more than a million currently unserved or underserved mostly rural locations.
• Increasing Internet Affordability: harter actively promoted the Emergency Broadband Benefit and Affordable Connectivity Programs (ACP), including in our stores, through news and social media, on our website, and through direct mail to ensure we reach unconnected families in need. Charter’s significant participation in these programs has helped millions of families in need gain and keep access to reliable, high-speed in-home internet service.

When a bipartisan congress created the ACP, they made it available to all low-income families. In other words, the law doesn’t restrict the ACP benefit to “new users” of the internet, in fact, it requires the opposite. The same bipartisan Congress chose to make the ACP available to households that qualify “for a participating provider’s existing low-income program” (called an “alternative verification process”) – so long as they had been in place when the providers’ own funds were at stake. Lawmakers should be proud of the programs they have supported and the difference they’ve already helped make – individual lives changed, rural towns given new opportunities to compete, and entire communities reaping the rewards. Few things matter more than continuing this progress connecting the millions of Americans who still aren’t online and ensuring that high-speed internet remains within reach for every family in America, regardless of income.