The Bipartisan Case for the Affordable Connectivity Program

Posted to Technology May 28, 2024 by Mignon L. Clyburn, Michael O’Rielly

Today’s interconnected world makes it hard to imagine a day or more without internet access, but that may soon be the reality for millions of Americans when funding for a critical federal program runs out. The Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) provides a monthly subsidy to eligible low-income households to help pay their monthly broadband bill. To be clear, we’re talking about basic internet access and the doors it opens, not free Netflix.

This program has made tremendous progress in getting and keeping low-income Americans connected to affordable broadband, but if Congress fails to fund it this month, the digital divide will widen. Now is the time for lawmakers from both sides of the aisle to come together and fund this popular, empowering, consumer-friendly, fiscally compelling and bipartisan program.

The ACP is the nation’s most successful and sensible broadband affordability program by many metrics. More than  23 million households participate. That means 70 million Americans depend on the ACP for sustainable connectivity — one in six. American families struggle to meet housing, food and transportation expenses, much less broadband.

Moreover, recipients are spread throughout our nation. Half of these households live in red congressional districts and half in blue ones. Nearly half are military families, a fourth live in rural communities, a fourth are Latino, and a fourth are Black. Nearly 20 percent of those enrolled are seniors 65 or older.

The program’s popularity stems from a few factors. First, the subsidy amount makes a meaningful difference for those with limited resources. The ACP provides $30 a month toward broadband or $75 on tribal lands — a significant amount that can cover a monthly bill for many ACP participants, including many who are unbanked.

For the fiscally minded, ACP differs from most federal programs because, to borrow a phrase, it provides “a hand up, not a handout.” Connectivity opens up job opportunities and access to telehealth. It enables low-income students to play on a level field with access to assignments and school resources when they leave the campus. According to  an FCC survey conducted in December 2023, 75 percent of ACP participants use their connections for school work and 72 percent for telehealth. Almost half used the internet to work or apply for work. The ACP, in other words, is an investment in empowering individuals and producing greater self-sufficiency.

This investment pays off.  Research finds that broadband adoption results in economic growth. Not only does it mean higher incomes and lower unemployment, but it saves in public spending by lowering dependence on and using government benefits. In fact, every $1 of ACP service subsidy results in close to $2 in benefits to the subscriber. Plus, dollars spent on the ACP come right back into the economy with a high return on investment.

Researchers estimate that the ACP added $55.2 billion to GDP — 3.89 times the $14.2 billion investment of the program.

That is not to mention the staggering cost savings from telehealth. Recent studies have found the average individual savings for using telehealth for non-urgent doctor appointments is almost $300 yearly.

Today, there is bipartisan support for legislation to fund the program through the end of the year — with co-sponsors as politically disparate as Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).

Some 400 organizations across the political spectrum support funding the program. Another bipartisan piece of legislation would fund a reformed ACP with eligibility more carefully tailored to include those who need help staying connected.

Politically, Americans support renewing the program: 79 percent of all Americans, including 64 percent of Republicans, 78 percent of independents and 95 percent of Democrats. The research shows that 80 percent of Americans in rural communities support the program and support parallels that in urban areas. Congress is hearing about it: Americans have made more than 400,000 calls and emails to Congress asking for funding.

So now it’s time to fund it with appropriations sufficient to carry the program forward. That is not to suggest ACP couldn’t be refined and reformed so that eligibility is more precisely tailored to the genuinely needy, generating greater support for the program. Fixes to program eligibility and addressing waste, fraud and abuse are generally favored by industry participants.

Regardless of one’s political affiliation, funding the ACP offers a rare win for all — for members of Congress, constituents, veterans, seniors, students, workers and our future. Members on both sides of the aisle should renew funding for the program and keep America connected.

About the Authors

Mignon L. Clyburn

Mignon L. Clyburn was the first acting female chairwoman of the Federal Communications Commission. She wrote this for InsideSources.com.

 

Michael O’Rielly

Michael O’Rielly served as a commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission from 2013 to 2020. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.

 

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/05/bidens-rural-broadband-push-is-a-slow-motion-train-wreck/

 

Biden’s Rural Broadband Push Is a Slow-Motion Train Wreck

May 4^th, 2024

By Michael O’Rielly

 

Two years after the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) committed $7.5 billion toward Joe Biden’s goal of 500,000 new electric vehicle (EV) charging stations, his administration has built a whopping seven. Not 7,000. Just seven. But even that “painfully slow rollout” is starting to look like a land speed record compared with the slow-motion train wreck derailing the administration’s rural broadband promises.

 

Alongside its funding for EV chargers, the IIJA also committed a staggering $42 billion for the even tougher challenge of bringing high-speed internet access within reach of every American household. Now, both efforts are now floundering for the same reason: the Biden appointees holding the purse strings seem more interested in advancing ideological agendas than in delivering on Congress’s bipartisan mandate to Build, Build, Build. Faced with a choice between appeasing unions and accelerating construction, Biden’s Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) appointees chose to suffocate the EV-charging program with arbitrary labor mandates not found anywhere in the law Congress passed. Now they look on bewildered wondering why their program has become a punchline.

 

Meanwhile, on the rural broadband front, the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has decided to openly defy Congress by launching a quixotic crusade to mandate a specific price on the service plans that participating broadband providers must offer low-income customers. Never mind that the IIJA explicitly forbids broadband price regulation, or that Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo promised Congress that her team would never force states to dictate prices. NTIA has now fully backtracked on that commitment — caving to activists’ demands for price controls, holding back funds from any state that dares questions the legality of those demands, and spinning pliant journalists with the fiction that unlawful price caps were always an integral part of Congress’s plan. 

 

In truth, NTIA’s price control demands are directly undermining the goal of universal broadband, in two critical ways.

 

First, by choosing this hill to die on, NTIA is adding months of delays by ensnaring itself in entirely avoidable fights with state broadband offices. The infrastructure law requires each state to submit to NTIA for approval a plan for this federal funding. Recognizing the law’s clear prohibition on price regulation, Virginia, Florida, and other states have resisted NTIA’s arm-twisting to mandate specific price points in their state plans. NTIA bureaucrats have petulantly responded by refusing to sign off on those states’ plans and refusing to release their funding to get started on network expansion projects. In fact, 30 months after the IIJA’s passage, NTIA has approved only four state broadband expansion plans — an infuriating display of bureaucratic malaise that makes the FHWA’s EV rollout look positively speedy by comparison.

 

But even if NTIA “succeeds” in unlawfully bending states to its will, that would quickly prove a pyrrhic victory. After all, Congress’s prohibition on price controls was not an oversight but rather an intentional recognition that price regulation would repel the private investment crucial to making the IIJA’s rural broadband goals a success.

 

Rural network-construction projects are wildly expensive, aiming to connect lightly populated areas with relatively few potential customers to offset the cost. IIJA-grant subsidies will help make these projects economically feasible — but every added mandate, restriction, and bureaucratic demand that NTIA layers onto states’ grant programs tilts the economic balance back in the wrong direction. If you push too far, the broadband providers estimating the investment risks may soon decide that it’s not worth it even to apply for funding.

 

That would leave rural communities with fewer interested participants, including inexperienced internet providers better at making promises than delivering world-class networks. Some $42 billion could go out the door with relatively little show for it — a supersized sequel to the abysmal results produced by Obama-era rural broadband boondoggles.

 

The infrastructure bill was a historic, bipartisan breakthrough, with pluses and minuses. But the bill’s broadband promise and potential will go up in smoke if the Biden administration doesn’t restrain its ideological impulses to steal defeat from the jaws of victory.

 

Michael O’Rielly served as an FCC commissioner from 2013 to 2020.