Low-income

Cities and urban counties across the US are raising concerns that a recent rule from President Biden’s administration could preclude them from tapping into $350 billion of coronavirus relief aid to expand high-speed internet connections. The American Rescue Plan includes broadband infrastructure among the primary uses for pandemic aid flowing to each city, county and state. But an interim rule published by the US Treasury Department has narrowed the broadband eligibility.

Pew Research Center released a sweeping report looking at how Americans have used the internet in the pandemic, how reliant they were on digital tools, and some of the struggles they have had as they tried to conduct many of the work-related, educational, social and community activities of their lives online. The headlines from the survey included:

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