FCC Commissioner: Ending affordable internet is a gut punch to US prosperity

The Affordable Connectivity Program helps 23 million American households afford the internet. But on Feb. 8, the program began winding down due to a lack of funding.  

Today, new households no longer can enroll. Soon, current households will confront a choice between bill shock and disconnection. We cannot let this happen.

Established in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Affordable Connectivity Program connects low-income households to high-quality internet access service, often for free. Americans in all 50 states use it — from 130,000 households in my home state of Kansas to 1.1 million in Ohio and 270,000 in Nevada.  

These households live in rural areas and urban centers; in fact, the program has surpassed expectations in rural enrollment. They also live on Tribal lands. They include young learners, grandparents and everyone in between. 

To put it plainly, the Affordable Connectivity Program is the most effective program we’ve had in helping low-income Americans get online and stay online. Indeed, it has been the most successful program ever in our decades-long bipartisan effort to solve the digital divide.

But the Affordable Connectivity Program is in jeopardy. Without additional appropriations from Congress, the program will run out of money as soon as April.

This means that millions of Americans will lose access to affordable broadband. As soon as funding runs out, monthly internet bills for these low-income households will skyrocket. I expect many of them will be unable to stay connected.  

Nationally, 49 percent of these households are “subscription vulnerable,” meaning they find the internet very difficult to fit into their monthly budgets and are constantly on the edge of disconnection. Few states offer internet affordability programs for these households to fall back on. Some may step in and try to create them, but others may not, and any state efforts are unlikely to match the Affordable Connectivity Program’s scale, let alone reach full implementation, in just a few months.  

That leaves only the charity of internet service providers. While many of them agreed to create low-cost plans in partnership with the Affordable Connectivity Program, there’s no business case for them to keep 23 million households connected for free without federal support. It’s no wonder internet service providers themselves are calling for the program to be funded. 

The removal of an internet connection could fundamentally change the destiny of these families. For example, nearly a quarter of teens living in households making less than $30,000 per year say that they sometimes cannot complete their homework due to a lack of reliable computer or internet access. 

Internet access also increases employment and earnings for low-income users. Access to telehealth services increases access to care and decreases costs.  

These studies show that today, internet access is critical for nearly every part of life. They also show that the times when families struggle to afford broadband — like during job transitions or health scares, for example — are exactly when they need a connection the most.

The broader impact of the end of the Affordable Connectivity Program won’t just be felt by individual households. It will handcuff the biggest investment this country has ever made in broadband infrastructure deployment, the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment Program.  

That program put $42.5 billion into building new networks that reach millions of unserved and then-underserved homes, primarily in rural communities. But without the Affordable Connectivity Program, Broadband Equity Access and Deployment dollars will not reach as far as they could. The Affordable Connectivity Program makes building out to these rural homes less risky and less expensive, because more of the serviceable population can afford to subscribe.  

A recent study concluded that the Affordable Connectivity Program reduces the subsidy needed to incentivize building in rural areas by a whopping 25 percent. With the program, states can stretch their dollars farther and connect more rural homes. Without it, they can’t.

I’m glad to say there is reason for hope. Because of the program’s widespread adoption, calls to restore funding have come from every part of the country. 

President Biden asked Congress to fund the program as part of his budget. Twenty-six bipartisan governors and 174 mayors have also urged Congress to do so. 

Support within Congress itself is bipartisan and bicameral; the Affordable Connectivity Program Extension Act, which would provide $7 billion to restore funding to the program, has Democratic and Republican sponsors in both the House and the Senate. The Senate Republican sponsors were part of a group of eight Republican senators who urged continuity of the program as early as June 2023. 

As President Biden said in North Carolina just a few weeks ago, “[high]-speed internet isn’t a luxury anymore, it’s an absolute necessity.”  

Closing the digital divide is about opening opportunities for all, including the millions of Americans who lack broadband because they can’t otherwise afford it. At this pivotal moment, we can’t turn back.

Geoffrey Starks is a commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission.