Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act

Comcast increased the speeds of four of its service tiers at no charge and made two announcements aimed at households enrolled in the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), which is slated to begin winding down in April 2024. Comcast has doubled its Connect tier from 75 Mbps to 150 Mbps. Connect More has moved from 200 Mbps to 300 Mbps; and the Fast tier moves from 400 Mbps to 500 Mbps. Xfinity Prepaid has been increased by a factor of four, from 50 Mbps to 200 Mbps. The speed increases are available to both new and existing customers. ACP.

Lieutenant Governor Garlin Gilchrist II (D-MI) and the Michigan High-Speed Internet Office (MIHI) announced that the Biden Administration has approved Michigan’s proposed State Challenge Process, which will give Michiganders an opportunity to help identify locations across the state that are eligible for high-speed internet infrastructure expansion through the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program.

Most of the concern over the impending demise of the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP)—the federal subsidy that’s made broadband cheaper or free for more than 23 million households—has focused on the people about to have a new hole drilled in their monthly budgets. Attendees at a DC conference hosted by an association of smaller telecom firms feel their pain: “Half of our problem in this nation is not accessibility, it's affordability,” said ACA Connects President and CEO Patricia Jo Boyers, at the group’s 

Best practice methods for assessing affordability developed and endorsed by academic and government affordability experts can provide much greater precision in assessing need thereby enabling more informed and more targeted digital equity interventions. However, recent experience in Washington state has revealed that few of us in the digital equity realm are yet comfortable applying these methods, or, indeed, are even aware of them.

With the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) on the brink of exhausting its funding and congressional action to secure its future still uncertain, it’s time we have the hard conversation about sunk costs. For ACP, that includes:

We stand at a crossroad in the landscape of communications and digital equity. As we navigate the complexities of the 21st century, one thing has remained unchanged—our commitment to ensuring that every American, regardless of where you live or how much you make, has access to reliable, affordable, and high-speed Internet.

States and the federal government may agree that the expansion of broadband service around the country funded with $42.5 billion from the infrastructure act should be affordable for low-income people. But at least one state doesn’t agree that it should be dictating what’s affordable. After reviewing Virginia’s plan for its Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment funding, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration told the state it needed to be more specific.

America’s Communications Association (ACA Connects), the Rural Broadband Association (NTCA), and the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association (WISPA) issued a joint statement to the Federal Communications Commission urging it to exclude smaller and rural broadband providers from its new digital discrimination rules, citing a lack of evidence they engage in discrimination where they build and calling into question the FCC’s legal authority to impose the rules. The organizations argued that the 

Service providers will not be required to list information related to the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) on their broadband labels, according to guidance issued by the FCC's Wireline Competition Bureau (WCB) on Monday.

The Federal Communications Commission is poised to raise taxes through its Universal Service Fund—a regressive, hidden tax on consumers' phone bills that funds a series of unaccountable, bloated internet subsidy programs. Rather than giving the FCC carte blanche to expand its balance sheet, Congress must reform the USF's structural problems, reevaluate its component programs, and get the FCC's spending under control. Here is my plan to do that.