Lifeline 'Flaw' Could Hurt Online Enrollment, FCC Told

The Federal Communications Commission needs to fix a “flaw” in the online enrollment system for the Lifeline subsidy program that could hurt rural and other customers signing up for discounted phone service offered to low-income consumers, Q Link Wireless LLC recently told senior agency staffers. Q Link executives, including President Paul Turner, met with FCC representatives on May 23 to argue for including “application programming interfaces” in the national Lifeline verifier. The verifier is being added to online enrollment as part of an FCC effort to shift responsibility for determining eligibility from phone service providers to the independent, FCC-designated, not-for-profit Universal Service Administrative Co.  Without APIs, the national verifier “could disconnect millions of rural Americans from the enrollment process,” Q Link said. “If left uncorrected, this flaw will effectively deny access to mobile wireless broadband Lifeline services to millions of low-income Americans in rural areas,” the company said, pointing to states where it “provides a substantial number of rural households” with data and calling services under the subsidy.

“[A]s USAC’s plans currently stand, the National Verifier would permit consumer online eligibility verification if the consumer can navigate that process without the carrier, and it would permit carriers using agents to have the agents assist consumers with eligibility verification and enrollment,” Q Link continued, “but it will not support both online eligibility verification and carrier assistance to consumers at the same time.” That means, according to the filing, that customers who want to sign up online must navigate the national verifier by themselves and repeat that “cumbersome process” again with the carrier, which would also have to collect the consumers’ information and verify it, a step that would be unneeded with an API link. What is left is only in-person assistance provided by the carriers, according to Q Link, but this is not enough for rural customers who may be a considerable drive from the nearest in-person assistance, which is too expensive to distribute further.