Rural Americans Were Less Likely to Enroll in a Federal Broadband Assistance Program. Now It’s Too Late to Sign up

Rural households were not as likely as their urban counterparts to enroll in the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), a federal fund that is running out of money to help low income families connect to the internet. About a third (37 percent) of rural households that are eligible for the monthly discount on broadband subscriptions had enrolled in the program as of December 2023. A Daily Yonder analysis showed that 3.2 million rural households had signed up for the benefit. Before ACP stopped accepting new enrollments, households were eligible to sign up to receive a broadband discount of up $30 per month if their income was at or below 200% of the Federal Poverty Guidelines, or if they received aid from certain federal assistance programs like SNAP or Medicaid. An estimated 5.4 million rural households met these criteria but did not sign up for ACP, something the Benton Institute for Broadband and Society said was probably due to lack of awareness about the program.