Back in December of 2021, Congress passed a new act to help out low-income families. This was the Affordable Connectivity Program- born out of what was known as the Emergency Broadband Benefit, the law provides a discount of up to $30 on internet services for all eligible households. These households also receive $100 towards any one personal computer or tablet to ensure that they’re sufficiently connected to the world. Sounds great, right? Well, it doesn’t exist anymore.

The ACP began winding down this past February, when the federal government stopped accepting new applicants. April 30 marked the last day it existed at all. Participants are still getting a “partial” $14 discount during the month of May as a replacement program, but after that the entire thing will be dead in the water. It might seem like a very sustainable idea- so why has it stopped?

The motivation behind Congress’ decision to terminate the program is pretty simple- they’re running out of funding. When the ACP was first launched two and a half years ago, it was allocated $14.2 billion for its lifetime- which sounds like a decent amount, but every enrolled household costs the government $100 outright, plus another $360 every year. Multiply this by the whopping 23 million families enrolled by February (nearly one fifth of the country’s population) and it’s easy to see where all that government money went. Now it’s just a matter of whether enough politicians want to keep investing into it.

It’s not surprising that many people aren’t happy about all of this. In fact, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) memoed Congress over a month ago urging them to renew the program. Nothing happened- but people aren’t giving up. On April 30, a rally was held in Washington DC which included members of the FCC, a bunch of public interest groups, and even a US senator- all campaigning to get the ACP renewed. Since things aren’t really done until the end of May, they have another four weeks where it’s still easy to get full funding back.

While all of this is going on, most students in our school who don’t benefit from the program don’t even know that it exists. From a survey of 10 different students grades 10 and 11, only one had heard of the ACP beforehand with any idea of what it did. That’s going to be expected; kids aren’t paying the home bills and most of them weren’t even enrolled in this in the first place, but it goes to show how little knowledge or interest there is surrounding the program among teenagers. “I mean that’s really sad, I guess,” commented one sophomore after hearing about the government’s decision not to keep things running. An anonymous student Aaron Alonso is even on record saying “I’m all for [the ACP], give me WiFi,” and then becoming indifferent after learning that it was only for low-income families. Come on, now.

Will things change for the better, with the ACP coming back for another round of funding? Nobody really knows yet, but people have taken action, and there’s definitely still a chance that it will come around again if that action doesn’t stop.

Originally published on May 8, 2024, in https://hftornadonews.org/tech-zone

Millions of People Have Been Getting Internet at a Discount- But Not Anymore