FCC Extends COVID Lifeline Program Waivers to June 30, 2021

In light of the ongoing pandemic, the Federal Communications Commission's Wireline Competition Bureau finds good cause to extend, on its own motion, its prior waivers of the Lifeline program rules governing documentation requirements for subscribers residing in rural areas on Tribal lands, recertification, reverification, general de-enrollment, and income documentation through June 30, 2021.1 However, the bureau declines to further extend the existing waiver of the FCC's Lifeline usage requirement beyond May 1, 2021. At the expiration of the current waiver period on February 28, 2021, the requirement that Lifeline subscribers who are not paying an end-user fee for their Lifeline service must use their service at least every 30 days, with an additional 15-day cure period, will have been waived for almost a year. As the length of the non-usage waiver has increased, so has the likelihood that universal service funding is being disbursed for connections that have not been used.