FCC Announces Lifeline Minimum Service Standards and Indexed Budget Amount

The Federal Communications Commission's 2016 Lifeline Order established minimum service standards for certain Lifeline-supported services and either established annual increases in those standards in the FCC’s rules or directed the Wireline Competition Bureau to update the minimum service standards pursuant to calculations set out in the Order and the FCC’s rules. Accordingly, the Bureau announces the newly calculated minimum service standards for fixed and mobile broadband. These standards will take effect on December 1, 2019. The Bureau also announces that the budget for federal universal service support for the Lifeline program for calendar year 2020 will be $ 2,385,292,106. Beginning December 1, 2019, Lifeline minimum service standard for:

• Fixed broadband speed will be 20 Mbps downstream and 3 Mbps upstream; the data usage will be 1024 GB per month.
• Mobile broadband data usage will increase to 8.75 GB per month; the mobile broadband speed remains 3G.
• Mobile voice service will remain unchanged, at 1,000 minutes per month.