FCC’s Wireline Competition Bureau Low-Income Broadband Pilot Program Staff Report

Participating carriers in the Federal Communications Commission’s Low-Income Broadband Pilot Program were required to collect and submit a large amount of anonymized data so that the FCC and others could use such information for their own studies and observations. The data collected during each project is being released with this Report to further enrich the public’s understanding of low-income broadband use. This Report highlights several important patterns in the data relevant to any consideration of Lifeline support for broadband:

• First, many of the pilot projects provide information about Lifeline-eligible consumers’ preferences for service and their willingness to pay for services or hardware. Within the fixed service projects, in particular, patterns suggest consumers were willing to pay for speeds within the mid-range of options, though there was little interest in the highest speed tiers. For mobile service projects, when consumers were given the option between hotspot plans versus smartphone plans, the majority selected smartphone service plans.
• Second, several of the pilot projects tested varying subsidy amounts or discounts offered to consumers for both the service and a device. Patterns within the data indicate that cost to consumers does have an effect on adoption and which plans they choose. In several of the projects, when given the choice among service plans, new adopters were willing to pay for broadband service, but tended to choose more modest and affordable speeds and data allowances.
• Third, requiring ETCs to offer or provide digital literacy training does not appear to be an efficient or effective model for converting non-adopters to adopters. Participating consumers generally had little interest in training provided by the ETCs. This raises the question of whether other organizations specializing in digital literacy training may be more successful at such training.

Additionally, it is important to note that, by design, the pilot projects only studied broadband adoption among the subset of low-income consumers who were not current subscribers to any broadband service.