Treasury to Get Nine-Figure Return On DTV Coupon Program

The US Treasury will get at least $139 million back when the National Telecommunications and Information Association has redeemed its final $40 DTV-to-analog converter box coupon, and likely more along the lines of a $200 million-plus return. While NTIA cannot calculate exactly how much money will be returned until the program ends at the end of October, the deadline for requests was July 31 and NTIA published a final active coupon request figure of 4,287,379. That is the number of coupons it had sent out but had not been redeemed. With $310,796,690 in coupon funds left as of Aug. 12 (the last update), if every one of those coupons had to be redeemed, it would cost $171,496,516, leaving the government with $139,300,174 left over. But at the current average redemption rate of about 55%, that would mean the refund to Treasury would be more on the order of $214 million.