The FCC’s emergency internet discounts are leaving millions behind

Nearly 4 million households have enrolled in the Federal Communications Commission's emergency broadband benefit program since it launched in May. But as researchers have begun digging into data recently released by the FCC, they're finding that not only are the vast majority of eligible Americans still being left out of the $3.2 billion program, but there are also stark geographic differences in where people are being enrolled. According to a new report by the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, only one in 12 households that are eligible for the EBB program are currently enrolled. The study also found that major cities including Houston and Chicago are falling far behind in terms of their enrollment rates, while Puerto Rico and cities including New Orleans, Detroit, Milwaukee, Baltimore, Cleveland and Philadelphia are seeing higher rates of adoption. That part, at least, is encouraging, says John Horrigan, a senior fellow at the Benton Institute who authored the report, because these are cities that have traditionally had low rates of broadband use. "It's good that the data makes sense," Horrigan said.

But others are not so encouraged. "The data shows that the benefit is not getting adopted at the rate you might hope and might have expected given the magnitude of the assistance available and who's eligible," said Jonathan Mayer, assistant professor of computer science at Princeton University and former chief technologist of the FCC. "I think it's now very likely that the overwhelming majority of the EBB will be unspent by the time the pandemic has come to a close for many Americans." Mayer ound that while enrollment rates were fairly low across the country, three areas stuck out as outliers with particularly high adoption: one area that includes Apache County, Arizona; another that includes McKinley County, New Mexico; and a pocket of Eastern Kentucky. Mayer dug deeper and found that all of these areas are home to small, locally focused internet service providers that appear to be more proactive about enrolling people in the program.