Low-income

The Federal Communications Commission may propose rules and seek public comment on how to best lower costs and address the lack of choice for broadband services available to households in apartments, condos, public housing, and other multi-tenant buildings. Thirty-one organizations wrote to the FCC to express their support for opt-out of bulk billing arrangements.

The Senate Commerce Committee advanced Senator Peter Welch’s (D-VT) amendment to fund the Affordable Connectivity Program with $7 billion, as requested in his bicameral, bipartisan Affordable Connectivity Program Extension Act. The amendment was attached to the PLAN for Broadband Act, legislation to streamline federal broadband program to make it more accessible for underserved areas. The Affordable Connectivity Program Extension Act’s original Senate cosponsors include Sens Welch (D-VT), JD Vance (R-OH), Jacky Rosen (D-NV), Kevin Cramer (R-ND), Sherrod Brown (D-O

An appeals court ruled the current structure of the Universal Service Fund is unconstitutional. This decision puts at risk the high-speed connectivity of millions of rural and low-income Americans and the future trajectory of U.S. economic growth and global competitiveness. Now it’s Congress’s duty to promptly and decisively make clear the nation’s unwavering commitment to affordable, universal connectivity. The court’s fundamentally flawed decision hands Congress an enormously important opportunity to seize the initiative and ensure our nation’s abiding commitment to universal service.

The Federal Communications Commission's Wireline Competition Bureau (Bureau) announced updated minimum service standards for Lifeline-supported services as required by the 2016 Lifeline Order. The 2016 Lifeline Order established minimum service standards for certain Lifeline-supported services and established annual increases in those standards either in the FCC’s rules or pursuant to calculations set out in the Order and the FCC’s rules.  Accordingly, the Bureau announced the newly calculated minimum service standard for fixed broadband data usage allowance, which is the same as the curren

Reps Mike Carey (R-OH) and Nikki Budzinski (D-IL) introduced bipartisan, bicameral legislation to renew the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP)—a federal program that helped low-income households afford access to high-speed internet.

The death of the US government's Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) is starting to result in disconnection of Internet service for Americans with low incomes. Charter Communications reported a net loss of 154,000 Internet subscribers that it said was mostly driven by customers canceling after losing the federal discount.

This episode of The Divide features John Horrigan, senior fellow at the Benton Institute for Broadband and Society. We discussed a new report released from Benton assessing the impact of the end of the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) on low-income households and the economy at large.

Goal One for the District of Columbia State Broadband and Digital Equity Office is to make high-quality, affordable, high-speed internet accessible to all residents of D.C. in their homes and local Community Anchor Institutions (CAIs) and drive equitable adoption of broadband. Key to that goal is ensuring that no D.C. resident must pay more than two percent of their gross income per month for high-speed internet. But, as a percentage of the total population, D.C. has more people with income below 150 percent of the federal poverty line than the US does overall.

When it comes to cable earnings, the outlook hasn’t been exactly optimistic. Cable broadband “may decline for the foreseeable future,” Wolfe Research recently predicted, as valuation multiples for Charter and Comcast “near all-time lows.” Charter and Comcast lost 149,000 and 120,000 broadband subscribers, respectively, in the second quarter.

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) announced the fourth round of recommended awardees for last mile broadband projects as part of the $2 billion Last Mile Federal Funding Account Grant Program. This program expands broadband internet access for underserved and unserved communities across California.