Ten Things About ACP that Ted Cruz Cares About #4 ACP and GDP

A fair reading of Dr. John Horrigan’s work would start by adopting his insight that the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) is part of a three-legged stool that during the pandemic helped increase broadband adoption and sustain it for low-income households. Philanthropic and private sector initiatives were important, but the Emergency Broadband Benefit Program (EBB) and then the ACP were crucial in making these efforts have an impact on a national scale. It is then important to consider how Dr. Horrigan describes that ACP’s predecessor EBB is an important historical antecedent that, if, taken into account, would increase that number of households that were not connected prior to a government subsidy program.  As he writes, “It is hard to escape the fact that pandemic era initiatives (such as stimulus checks, the EBB, private-sector marketing initiatives, and philanthropic efforts) were responsible for getting a large number of low-income households online. The ACP not only sustained this, but helped low-income households weather a 2022 that saw a growth in inflation, the end of the child tax credit, and other economic headwinds. It is worth noting that the data only takes us through 2022 and it is likely that 2023 ACP signups included significant numbers of wireline customers." Further, Dr. Horrigan writes that based on his analysis of American Community Survey data from 2019-2022, 56% of the growth in home wireline broadband subscriptions in that time was among households whose annual incomes were $50K or less. And 38% of the growth was from “under $25K households” (that make up about 16% of all households.)¹ ACP and EBB were partly responsible for this.

[Blair Levin is the Policy Advisor to New Street Research and a nonresident senior fellow at Brookings Metro​.]