New York Mandates $15-a-Month Broadband for Low-Income Users

The newly enacted New York state budget requires nearly all internet providers to sell broadband service for $15 a month to low-income customers who qualify for food stamps, Medicaid or similar benefits. Internet providers have 60 days to start offering minimum internet speeds of 25 megabits per second for $15 a month to qualifying customers. They have the option to provide 100 Mbps service for $20. The mandated service is similar to what state regulators already require from two of the state’s largest providers, Spectrum and Optimum. Since 2017, for example, Spectrum has offered qualifying low-income customers 30 Mbps service for $14.99. But the new law will make low-cost broadband available to many more of the state’s 1.7 million low-income households. The eligibility requirements in the new law are more expansive than what the Public Service Commission imposed on Spectrum. And the new law applies to all of the more than two dozen internet providers in New York, unless they have fewer than 20,000 customers and can show hardship.