FCC Chairman Pai's Plan Will Take Broadband Away From Poor People

[Commentary] Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has portrayed the Lifeline program and the people who benefit from it as hopelessly corrupt. Now he is proposing to make changes that will, for all intents and purposes, destroy the program. He aims to severely reduce both the supply of and demand for Lifeline-supported services. 

Chairman Pai proposes to make the Lifeline subsidy available only to those companies that own their facilities, like the wires, towers, and other infrastructure that make up networks. The problem here? Seventy-five percent of Lifeline customers get their service from businesses that resell the capacity of companies like Sprint and T-Mobile. By eliminating 75 percent of the supply of Lifeline service, making the process for subscribing more burdensome and leaving open the possibility that some Lifeline-eligible subscribers won’t see a dime, demand will decline. This in turn could reduce the budget even further. This cycle could repeat year after year until there is little or no Lifeline budget at all. When asking your member of Congress to save network neutrality, ask him or her to save Lifeline, too.

[Gigi Sohn is a Mozilla fellow and former counselor to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. Amina Fazlullah is a Mozilla fellow, policy advisor to the National Digital Inclusion Alliance, and formerly the director of policy at the Benton Foundation.]