Remarks of Commissioner Clyburn at New America Foundation

[Commentary] Allow me to express my appreciation to the New America Foundation for inviting me to focus on a critically important topic I am deeply passionate about -- affordable mobile broadband. For broadband to reach its fullest potential, to improve the lives of every American, it must be both affordable and ubiquitous -- if it is not, it will become just another barrier that separates the "haves" and the "have nots"...The FCC has adopted a framework, which would sunset the current Lifeline program, and replace it with what I am proposing to be known going forward as: iBridge Now! The optimal way to discipline program expenditure for iBridge Now! is to focus on leveraging a modernized program to reduce the critical divides that exist in this nation, so that the number of eligible households decline, which means that the current program's expenditures declines.

The program should be focused on being part of a pathway out of poverty, poor education, lackluster healthcare options, and more. Our goal should be for iBridge Now! to be so successful and so enabling, that its recipients no longer need it or any other federal benefit program, because they no longer qualify. We should be bold and visionary and careful not to embrace an artificial budget, set at an arbitrary amount, and risk ensuring that millions remain stuck in digital badlands....We need to be clear about the purpose of Lifeline in the statue: it is to ensure that service is "affordable." The statue does not state that the purpose of Lifeline is to spur new adoption, nor does it say that services should only be affordable for select few low-income consumers who have never adopted broadband before. The word in the statute is affordable.