Lifeline/Low-Income Consumers

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai is looking to root out waste, fraud and abuse in Lifeline, the FCC's phone subsidy program for the poor. But he's not ready to cap the budget on the program just yet. His office began circulating its latest proposal for cleaning up the program. The latest proposed action is what the FCC is calling an "administrative clean-up" but it doesn't tackle some of the more controversial items on the agency's to-do list, such as instituting a funding cap and excluding wireless resellers from participating in the program.

The Aug 12 editorial “Stuck without Internet” outlined possible solutions to address the challenge of connecting more Americans to the Internet. We already have a broadband program to bridge the divide for poor rural Americans. It’s easy to get distracted by talk of spectrum, satellites or running expensive fiber across the entire country.

Four different universal service initiatives, each aimed at solving a different problem, are funded by a single surcharge on interstate and international telecommunications revenue. Over the past two decades, each program has grown independently without much regard to cost, or to the activities of the fund’s other programs. As a result, the surcharge has risen from 3 percent in 1998 to a whopping 24.4 percent today.

I will make sure every home in America has a fiber broadband connection at a price families can afford. That means publicly-owned and operated networks — and no giant Internet service providers running away with taxpayer dollars. My plan will:

The Federal Communications Commission's 2016 Lifeline Order established minimum service standards for certain Lifeline-supported services and either established annual increases in those standards in the FCC’s rules or directed the Wireline Competition Bureau to update the minimum service standards pursuant to calculations set out in the Order and the FCC’s rules. Accordingly, the Bureau announces the newly calculated minimum service standards for fixed and mobile broadband. These standards will take effect on December 1, 2019.

The Federal Communications Commission's Wireline Competition Bureau announces the counties in which conditional forbearance from the obligation to offer Lifeline-supported voice service applies, pursuant to the Commission’s 2016 Lifeline Order.

In an effort to expand the use of telecommunications services by low-income Americans, the Federal Communications Commission’s Lifeline program offers subsidies to qualifying low-income households. In recent years, the program has undergone significant reform and more modifications have been proposed.

The Federal Communications Commission's Wireline Competition Bureau seeks comment on a Joint Petition to pause the implementation of scheduled updates to the Lifeline minimum service standards and support amounts. Petitioners request that the Bureau pause both the scheduled update to the minimum service standard for Lifeline-supported mobile broadband service and the scheduled reduction in the support amount for Lifeline-supported mobile voice service, both of which would otherwise take effect on December 1, 2019.

The House has passed an omnibus appropriations bill, the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act, and it funds the Federal Communications Commission. But it will almost certainly need major tweaking if Senate Republicans are expected to approve it, partially due to three amendments related to FCC policy.

Why pursue an overall Universal Service Fund (USF) budget and what benefit would it bring? First and foremost, a budget is necessary to protect the investments of ratepayers who pay for our programs. Second, a topline budget would force the Federal Communications Commission to consider the whole USF when increasing program spending. Third, an FCC running up against a cap would have greater incentive to eliminate inefficiencies that detract from achieving the program’s mission and value. Fourth and finally, a budget would help protect universal service.