Low-income

Senate finishing crafting $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure proposal, including $65 billion for broadband

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.

Measuring Internet Poverty

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.

President Joe Biden wants to provide millions of Americans with high-speed internet. It won’t be easy.

Even before the pandemic, which largely confined most Americans to their homes for months, communities that lacked reliable high-speed internet began falling behind those that were well-connected.

The FCC’s emergency internet discounts are leaving millions behind

Nearly 4 million households have enrolled in the Federal Communications Commission's emergency broadband benefit program since it launched in May. But as researchers have begun digging into data recently released by the FCC, they're finding that not only are the vast majority of eligible Americans still being left out of the $3.2 billion program, but there are also stark geographic differences in where people are being enrolled.

Kentucky, Louisiana, and some Tribal areas lead early uptake of Emergency Broadband Benefit Program

Kentucky, Louisiana and Tribal areas have the largest shares of households signing up for the Emergency Broadband Benefit (EBB) Program subsidy. The Technology Policy Institute's (TPI) Broadband Map uses EBB data from the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC) to display program usage and overall progress across the country.

Customers facing issues with ISPs amid Emergency Broadband Benefit rollout

Millions of people signed up for the Federal Communications Commission‘s Emergency Broadband Benefit (EBB) program since it launched in mid-May—but records show that Americans faced significant frustrations with their internet service providers amid the rollout. While hundreds of providers agreed to be part of the EBB, customers of nearly every provider say issues have cropped up along the way.

Everyone Complains About the Lack of Competition. Now Someone Wants to Do Something About It.

As the debate about investing in broadband infrastructure continues in Washington this month, it was heartening to see that President Joseph Biden acted to address competition in residential broadband service. Here's a quick look at what he did. On July 9, President Biden signed an Executive Order launching a "whole-of-government" effort to promote competition across the economy. The Executive Order includes 72 initiatives.

The Emergency Broadband Benefit has thus far enrolled just 1 in 12 eligible households, but places with low broadband adoption rates show better results

Two weeks ago, the Federal Communications Commission released data on how many households have signed up for the Emergency Broadband Benefit (EBB), a program created by Congress in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The program offers eligible households a discount of up to $50 per month on broadband service.

2016 Called. It Wants to Know How Lifeline is Doing

In 2016, the Federal Communications Commission adopted a comprehensive reform and modernization of its Lifeline program. For the first time, the FCC included broadband as a supported service in the program, allowing support for stand-alone mobile (think cell phone) or fixed broadband Internet access service (think home broadband service delivered over a wire), as well as bundles including fixed or mobile voice and broadband. But the 2016 decision also set out to zero-out support for voice-only services.

Identification software issues bar many from unemployment benefits

The platform ID.me is run by a software company in Virginia, and it’s now a required part of more than 20 states’ unemployment programs. For many people, the ID.me process is simple: they use their smartphones to scan their faces and upload pictures of their government-issued identity cards. The images are checked by a facial recognition system. ID.me is meant to block scammers who are using fake or stolen identities to claim unemployment benefits, but the process is also cutting off an unknown number of people who don’t have the right technology or the right identification.