Low-income

Only an estimated one in seven eligible households have enrolled in the Federal Communications Commission's Emergency Broadband Benefit Program so far. The majority of those who have received the benefit were grandfathered in through Lifeline, an existing federal subsidy program aimed primarily at telephone users.

Dish Network’s Boost Mobile announced plans to acquire Gen Mobile, a Los Angeles (CA)-based prepaid mobile service provider specializing in serving “cost-conscious” consumers. Boost will be acquiring an undisclosed number of subscribers through the acquisition, but Stephen Stokols, who heads Boost and will oversee the Gen Mobile brand, said a key thing is the connection to bridging the digital divide. Dish is starting to move upmarket with Boost Mobile, but at the same time, “we don’t want to ignore the under-served market,” he said.

Libraries Without Borders US (LWB US) has been working to promote access to information in underserved communities across the country since 2015. Fundamental to our work is designing and implementing innovative programs that reimagine libraries, often by transforming nontraditional spaces into hubs for community learning and engagement.

This research presents evidence on the relationship between broadband pricing and labor market outcomes for low-income individuals. Specifically, it estimates the effects of a Comcast service providing discounted broadband to qualifying low-income families. Author George Zuo uses a triple differences strategy exploiting geographic variation in Comcast coverage, individual variation in eligibility, and temporal variation pre-and post-launch.

Consumer groups are still very much concerned about what happens if TracFone gets acquired by Verizon even though Verizon promises to serve the public interest.

Of the $65 billion that the infrastructure bill allocates for broadband projects, $14.20 billion is set aside for the establishment of the Affordable Connectivity Fund. The fund is an extension and reworking of the existing $3.2 billion Emergency Broadband Benefit (EBB) Program, a subsidy program established during the pandemic to help low-income households and Americans laid off during the pandemic stay connected to the internet. While the EBB was seen as temporary, the new fund is seen as more indefinite.

Tucson, Arizona has built a private wireless network to provide broadband to low-income households for free.

The Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) released a Notice of Funding Opportunity for the Connecting Minority Communities Pilot Program, which will direct $268 million for expanding broadband access and connectivity to eligible Historically Black Colleges or Universities (HBCUs), Tribal Colleges or Universities (TCUs), minority-serving institutions (MSIs), and consortia led by an HBCU, TCU, or MSI that also include a minority business enterprise or tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization. The Notice of Funding Opportunity 

Senate Democrats and Republicans unveiled a roughly $1 trillion proposal to improve the country’s roads, bridges, pipes, ports and Internet connections, setting in motion a long-awaited debate in the chamber to enact one of President Biden’s economic policy priorities. The roughly 2,700-page piece of legislation, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, includes $65 billion to expand broadband Internet access nationwide and ensure those who do have connectivity can afford their monthly payments.

The World Data Lab (WDL) has developed a global measurement framework of internet poverty to measure the number of people left behind in the internet revolution. People who can’t afford a basic package of connectivity—set at 1.5 gigabytes per month at a minimum download speed of 3 megabits per second (equivalent to 6 seconds to load a standard web page)—are internet-poor. WDL estimates that there are around 1.1 billion people living in internet poverty today.