Republicans Raise Serious Concerns About the FCC’s Management of the ACP

We write asking you to clarify your recent congressional testimony regarding the Federal Communications Commission’s Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP). At a hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on November 30, 2023, you asserted—without evidence and contrary to the FCC’s own data—that “25 million households” would be “unplug[ged]…from the internet” if Congress does not provide new funding for the ACP. This is not true. As Congress considers the future of taxpayer broadband subsidies, we ask you to correct the hearing record and make public accurate information about the ACP. As lawmakers with oversight responsibility over the ACP, we have raised concerns, shared by the FCC Inspector General, regarding the program’s effectiveness in connecting non-subscribers to the internet. While you have repeatedly claimed that the ACP is necessary for connecting participating households to the internet, it appears the vast majority of tax dollars have gone to households that already had broadband prior to the subsidy.  According to your testimony, the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC) found that only “20 or 22 percent” of ACP recipients lacked broadband prior to the ACP.  Previous FCC surveys have found the number of non-subscribers served by the program to be even lower at 16 percent. The program’s record of targeting taxpayer subsidies to consumers who already had broadband is further apparent in the FCC’s enrollment numbers: The number of households in the ACP—approximately 22 million—far exceeds the 16 million unconnected households according to 2021 Census data. We ask you to supplement your testimony from November 30, 2023, with the correct information about the number of Americans that will “lose” broadband if the ACP does not receive additional funds, and correct the hearing record accordingly by January 5, 2024. Additionally, we request that you provide the following information by January 5, 2024.

1. A description of efforts by the FCC to prepare for a potential lapse in ACP funding, including the agency’s communications with participating providers regarding their plans to notify consumers;
2. Whether the FCC has continued to support the expansion of ACP enrollment, including by encouraging providers to expand enrollment, since August 2023;
3. A list of efforts by the FCC to identify low-income households that do not already subscribe to broadband service;
4. Why the FCC has not yet published data on the number of households enrolled through a provider’s existing low-income program, as required by the ACP implementation order, and when it plans to do so;
5. Whether the FCC has collected and analyzed information about low-income households that currently lack broadband subscriptions to determine why those households do not purchase broadband;
6. Data that the FCC is collecting to measure progress towards achieving the goal of connecting households that were previously not subscribed to broadband, and how the FCC is using that data to measure progress towards that goal;
7. A list of efforts by the FCC to target ACP funds to households that previously lacked broadband subscriptions, rather than those that already had broadband, amid a potential lapse in funding;
8. A description of how the FCC has prioritized the ACP Outreach Grant Program applications that target unserved low-income households, as required by the ACP Outreach Grant Program implementation order;
9. A list of efforts by the FCC to measure the performance of ACP with respect to broadband adoption, as urged by the 2021 Grant Thornton Lifeline Report, and a description of the extent to which such efforts distinguish the respective effects of ACP and Lifeline; and
10. Enumeration of all expenses covered by the two percent of total ACP funding that the FCC reserved for administration costs.