Adoption

The Federal Communications Commission's Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), established in the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, is expected to end this Spring if it does not receive additional funding from Congress soon. The funding situation is so dire that this week the FCC halted any new enrollments in the program. For millions of people eligible for the ACP, affordable broadband service is getting harder to obtain.

The draft New Hampshire Digital Equity Plan was created with partnership and collaboration at its core, as a joint effort between the University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension, the National Collaborative for Digital Equity (NCDE), and the Digital Equity Research Center at the Metropolitan New York Library Council.

The White House Office of Management and Budget's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) has scored four forms that will be part of the Digital Equity Capacity Grant Program. The four forms are: Application, Consolidated Budget, Digital Equity Plan Amendments, and Specific Projects. OIRA has calculated how many hours it will take to complete each form.

In this economy, life as a working mom and caregiver for my grandma makes me feel like a magician. I pull rabbits out of my hat constantly. Every day, I somehow make a dollar out of 15 cents. Whether it’s the car payment, utilities, childcare, or rent, the economy does a great disappearing act with my income. A new program to lower the cost of my monthly internet, the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) has helped my daily magic show. It’s why I’m surprised to hear politicians in Washington are talking about letting it vanish in April. Congress needs to work together to save the program.

In 2023, Democracy Fund invested $3 million in grants to support state and local leaders advancing digital equity. We believe this work is vital for an inclusive, multiracial democracy. The 2023 Digital Democracy grantees  all share a commitment to action toward community-focused media policy and tech accountability. 

Americans made more than 280,000 calls, emails, and social media posts to Congress in support of funding for the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP). The program needs $7 billion in funding from Congress to ensure people aren’t disconnected from the internet in 2024. Don’t Disconnect US Day, which took place on January 25, spurred those who care about affordable internet to contact their congressional representatives. The resulting actions from supporters calling for Congress to fund the program included:

High-speed internet is something we count on to function day to day. The service elevates the lives and livelihoods of Americans whose broadband needs have been previously unmet. The 2023 Cox Expansion Impact Survey found 86 percent of consumer respondents with recently available high-speed internet said their lives have improved. This report outlines three ways that high-speed internet enriches the lives of rural Americans:

In a far cry from the early 2000s, most US adults today say they use the internet (95%), have a smartphone (90%) or subscribe to high-speed internet at home (80%), according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted May 19 to Sept. 5, 2023. Though adoption of these technologies has surged over the past two decades, there are notable differences by age, household income and educational attainment. There are large gaps between the lowest- and highest-income Americans in whether they have a broadband subscription.

Tracking broadband funding awards as they happen. In January 2024:

The fate of the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) remains unknown, but with the Federal Communications Commission scheduled to halt new enrollments in February, internet service providers are thinking about how a shutdown would impact the consumers relying on the subsidy. Some of the bigger companies like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon, said on their earnings calls they have backup plans if the ACP goes away. But what do the regional and rural providers think about the situation?