Affordability/Cost/Price

Vice President Kamala Harris (D-CA) says she will build an Opportunity Economy where everyone has the opportunity to not just get by, but to get ahead. Renewing the Federal Communications Commission's Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) is part of that agenda. Earlier this year, Congress failed to allocate funding for ACP and made monthly broadband bills more expensive for 23 million households enrolled in the program.

Most households in the U.S. today would consider internet service to be a necessity—and like many household expenses, it's gotten more expensive lately, at least in some areas. At U.S. News & World Report, we’ve been surveying Americans about their Internet Service Provider (ISP) experiences throughout the year. This time, we aimed to get feedback specifically related to costs for consumers living in the most populous states. Here's what we found, starting with some overall takeaways based on responses from across all five states:

Building on the Defeating the Digital Divide series, Kids First Chicago presents new findings from the 2022 American Community Survey (ACS) data, released in December 2023, and makes three key recommendations: 

In July 2024, the New Mexico Office of Broadband Access and Expansion (OBAE) released its Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program Initial Proposal Volume II.

Democratic Vice Presidential Nominee Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) unveiled his ticket's plans to improve the lives of rural voters, as Vice President Kamala Harris (D-CA) looks to cut into Donald Trump's (R-FL) support. The Harris-Walz plan calls on Congress to permanently extend telemedicine coverage under Medicare, a pandemic-era benefit that helped millions access care that is set to expire at the end of 2024.

The Affordable Connectivity Program, or ACP, enrolled more Americans than any previous broadband affordability program in the United States. Despite that success, the ACP faced substantial criticism from conservative members of Congress who saw it as giving away taxpayer dollars to many households that don’t actually need help affording their internet bill. The question going forward is not if the government will subsidize broadband service for Americans, but how. This paper attempts to inform that debate by examining four specific critiques of the ACP:

As broadband expansion efforts in the U.S. continue with historic investments, consumer demand for residential broadband services is of first-order importance. Several past broadband willingness to pay studies estimate the value of broadband to be low, compared to the current national average cost of internet subscriptions being around $65 per month.

The telecommunications industry is pinning its hopes on the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program to bring broadband to all hard-to-reach rural locations across the U.S.

In 2021 Vice President Kamala Harris (D-CA) agreed to lead the administration’s $42 billion plan for expanding high-speed internet to millions of Americans. That year, she tweeted that “we can bring broadband to rural America today.” Today, nearly three years after Congress passed the infrastructure bill that created the program, not one home or business has been connected through it.

The federal government has set aside $42 billion to connect last-mile communities and just under $1 billion for the middle mile networks that will provide the backbone to reach those unserved homes.