Kentucky, Louisiana, and some Tribal areas lead early uptake of Emergency Broadband Benefit Program

Kentucky, Louisiana and Tribal areas have the largest shares of households signing up for the Emergency Broadband Benefit (EBB) Program subsidy. The Technology Policy Institute's (TPI) Broadband Map uses EBB data from the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC) to display program usage and overall progress across the country. As of July 11, almost 3.6 million households had participated in EBB. As of July 15, USAC had not updated the amount of subsidy support claimed; the most recent listing includes data only through May, at which time only $34.6 million of $3.2 billion has been claimed. While the share of eligible households that have signed up for EBB by itself provides only limited generalizable information outside of specific areas, a broader question that can be answered statistically is what types of households are generally receiving EBB support. TPI's analysis of the EBB data suggests that areas with higher shares of low-income households with broadband are signing up at lower rates than elsewhere. This correlation suggests—but does not prove—that the households who could benefit the most are not the ones primarily benefiting from the program. It will be some time before we know how the benefits from the EBB were distributed, yet it is worth tracking closely and making public more detailed data so that we can learn what is working and what isn’t, and apply that knowledge towards future programs.