Witnesses at a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on Thursday called on Congress to provide more funding for a broadband affordability program that is set to run out of money next year.
The Affordable Connectivity Program, launched in 2022 as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, provides $30 per month that some households can put towards their internet bills, as well as a one-time $100 subsidy to buy computers. Households in certain rural and tribal areas receive up to $75 per month for their internet bills.
Funding for the program is expected to be depleted in early 2024.
Justin Forde — the vice president of government relations for Midco, an internet service provider in five Midwestern states — called the program a “tremendous success” and told lawmakers that the company has “thousands of customers” using ACP benefits. Approximately 2,000 of these did not subscribe before the program came out, he added.
“Low-income Americans rely on this program and would suffer a meaningful negative impact if the program ends,” Forde said.
One idea that has been proposed is rolling the program into the Federal Communication Commission’s Universal Service Fund and allowing it to be funded through “increased assessments on consumer bills for existing new services,” Forde said. He stopped short of endorsing the idea, however, saying that there would not be enough time for Congress to enact this, regardless of whether or not it is the right approach.
“The fact is that there is no time for the USF reform that would be required to accomplish this goal,” he said.
Sara Nichols, a senior planner for a local government development district in western North Carolina, said around 13,000 households in her Appalachian-based region still lack access to affordable and reliable broadband. She said high subscription costs were a “more prominent” barrier than a lack of access, pointing out that poverty rates in rural areas like her district tend to be higher than in urban areas.
Nichols called for Congress to renew the ACP program before the end of this year, warning of the consequences of allowing the program to “run out of funds and cease to exist.”
“If this happens, it will lead to higher-cost infrastructure projects that slow down our deployment — meaning rural folks across the country and my neighbors in western North Carolina will have to wait even longer to have access to affordable broadband in their homes,” Nichols said.
Members of the U.S. Cattlemen's Association, the National Grange, the Rural and Agriculture Council of America and RuralRISE Tech have also called for Congress extend the program. The groups sent a letter to House and Senate leaders on Monday that said eighteen million of the twenty eight-million households in the U.S. that lack broadband attribute the reason to not being able to afford it.
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The groups said rural Americans require internet to do things like submit homework assignments, file taxes and participate as members of faith communities. They said letting the program run out of money would be an "upsetting step backward and a slight to one of Congress' key commitments."
"Limiting the ACP to such short-lived and modest success would not only prevent further rural households from benefitting from the ACP — but it may also cause the millions who currently rely on this program to lose trust in Washington," they wrote.
Several lawmakers have also expressed concern about the expiration of this funding. Twenty-five bipartisan members of the Rural Broadband Caucus sent a letter to President Joe Biden and House and Senate Leaders on Wednesday urging them to extend funding for the Affordable Connectivity Program. Expiration of the program, they warned, would put the “millions of Americans who rely on the program at risk of losing broadband access.”
“We urge you to support funding for the Affordable Connectivity Program as we explore new funding mechanisms to remove this program from the traditional appropriations process,” they wrote. “We cannot risk our most vulnerable constituents losing access to the internet services they so depend.”
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