Internet Bills to Increase for Millions of Americans

For Ellimae Kalinoski and her family, the internet is a lifeline. She and her husband, who cannot work because of long COVID, get discounted web access through the Affordable Connectivity Program, which they also use to homeschool their autistic son.

Now funding for the ACP is set to run out, the parents are worried they soon won't be able to afford broadband access.

"It's incredibly needed," Kalinoski told Newsweek. "[The ACP] allowed us to continue to homeschool our autistic son—who absolutely needs to be homeschooled—and we are able to keep in touch with family and friends ... because we can use FaceTime without spending extra money on our phone plan."

She worries "not just for us, but for many, many people like us that need that extra income for food or health or supplies."

Internet service fees are set to rise for 23 million American households after the Biden administration's request for continued funding of the ACP fell on deaf ears in Congress. The program had been allocated $14.2 billion in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed in November 2021, and provides discounts on monthly internet bills to low-income and rural households. However, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently warned it was running out of money.

In October, the Biden administration requested an additional $6 billion from Congress to keep the ACP going until December this year. But with House leadership struggling to get its own appropriation bills passed, the call has yet to be answered.

In a letter to legislators on January 8, FCC chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said that "if Congress does not provide additional funding for the ACP in the near future, millions of households will lose the ACP benefit that they use to afford internet service. This also means that roughly 1,700 internet service providers will be affected by the termination of the ACP and may cut off service to households no longer supported by the program."

For Carrie Guida, executive director of the Pine River Group Home, which provides residential and community-based care for people with disabilities in central Minnesota, an affordable internet connection is often essential to providing for their rural clients.

She explained that federal rules require staff to verify their visits electronically on a system that geolocates them, leaving them to rely on their cell phone connection—which "can be really spotty"—or their client's home internet connection.

"If there's no internet service at that location, it's hard to document those [visits] in a compliant way," Guida told Newsweek. One individual she visits lives in an area where she cannot get a connection. Guida often has to pull over by the side of the road to document her visit.

On February 8, new ACP enrolments were frozen due to a lack of funding, and the FCC said coverage was set to end in April. However, the seemingly likely end of the ACP is not because there is a lack of bipartisan support for extending it.

"It does not look like it will be done, but I think it should be clear that if a bill were to go to the House floor to extend ACP, it would pass," Blair Levin, a senior fellow at Brookings and a former FCC chief of staff, told Newsweek.

"There are 15 Republican co-sponsors [as of February 17] of the ACP extension bill—meaning the only reason it's not going to pass the House is because the Speaker will not let it on the floor," he said. "A minority of the House has decided we should not have it; it's not a majority, and there's a lot of political support for the extension."

Newsweek approached the House Speaker's office for comment.

In an increasingly interconnected world, the loss of affordable internet connections for millions of households is expected to impact individuals' livelihoods and widen the digital divide in America at a time when the president has sought to close it.

An October study by consultancy BSG of 1,600 U.S. adults participating in the program found that 65 percent fear losing their primary source of income without the ACP discount, which rose to 67 percent among those in rural areas and parents with young children.

Three-quarters of the respondents worried about losing access to health care services, while 81 percent of parents expressed concern that their children could fall behind in their learning. Some 77 percent of military families—who account for around half of the households enrolled in the ACP—were worried about losing contact with friends and family.

Levin said that though it was not certain that some people would lose their job because they could no longer afford their internet connection, "the fears that were expressed by respondents were very realistic fears."

"I think some people will say, 'yeah, but if they're really going to lose their jobs, they'll come up with the $30 or the $20 or whatever'—and I think that reflects on a misunderstanding on what it is to be low-income," he said.

While the public and policymakers tended to see broadband subscriptions as something households either had or did not, "about 50 percent [of households] on the ACP have been both on and off broadband, because if you're low-income, you have variable income, and [so] some months you can afford it and some months you can't," Levin added.

The program is also arguably value for money when it comes to the economy. A February academic paper by researchers at George Mason University in Virginia estimated that for every dollar spent through the ACP, $3.89 was added to America's GDP.

Research even suggests that affordable broadband access increases employment rates and individual earnings, driven by greater workforce participation. Some 78 percent of ACP participants polled by BSG said their internet connection was important in helping them find better-paid jobs.

If low-income households lose the discount that the program provides, industry insiders and officials expect the higher prices to lead to many losing their internet connection altogether as they can no longer afford service bills. Some 95 percent of respondents to October's survey said they would struggle with the additional costs if funding was cut off.

There is evidence to suggest that this could not only have an impact on access to health care, but also lead to an increased cost to the government, as telehealth appointments cost 23 percent less than in-person visits and halve emergency department visits among veterans.

There are other impacts, too. Guida, who has written to her senators, noted people with disabilities, especially in rural areas, "are more likely to struggle with isolation" and "tend to be very low-income." Having affordable internet helped them minimize isolation by connecting with others, or attending worship services virtually, as well as keeping their telehealth appointments. "If their internet bills go up, and they lose their ability to afford internet, I think it's going to increase their risk of isolation," she said.

Kalinoski, of Brainerd, Minnesota, said the internet was needed for her son's schoolwork, and to order his annual state-required tests.

On February 12, White House senior adviser Tom Perez renewed its call to continue funding the ACP, telling reporters that for the president, the "internet is like water" in that "it's an essential public necessity that should be affordable and accessible to everyone."

When the winding down of the program was first announced in January, Broderick Johnson, executive vice president for public policy and digital equity at Comcast, wrote in support of not only continuing the ACP but also expanding it, describing it as "well worth the investment."

"If we fail, in this historic moment, to reach the tens of millions of more Americans who don't yet use the internet at home, then our collective future is at risk," he said. "That's why closing the digital divide must remain at the top of our country's priority list."

Newsweek approached Comcast on February 6 and 26, and asked how many interned customers it expected to lose, and whether the firm—which made $37.6 billion in profit last year—would be willing to offer a similar discount itself. Comcast did not respond.

Levin noted that some internet service providers, like Comcast, had created low-cost subscription services of their own volition, but said that while "there are certain basic necessities that we have, I think, collectively decided are the obligation of everyone," it was unusual to require a private entity to bear the same costs for those services as the government.

Critics might argue that the ACP has flawed eligibility requirements, but Levin argued that many government programs had flaws—especially those in their early years—and "as long as we don't cut off millions of people," those issues could be fixed with interventions from lawmakers.

There may also be hesitance among those who do not see internet access as a necessity that requires potentially indefinite government funding. Yet if, as academic research suggests, the ACP improves the economic situation of low-income households, at some point it would help many currently on it to no longer need the discount.

For those who do need continued support, Kalinoski's message to lawmakers is clear. "When COVID hit, everybody was one for all and all for one; we were fighting this thing together. And now it feels like those of us that have been disabled or are immunocompromised are being left behind," she said.

"We are still here, and we deserve life, and we deserve the things that we need as well—and we can't do that without the help of the representatives that are supposed to be representing everybody, not just able-bodied [people]. We need their help."

Update, 02/29/2024 12:06 p.m. ET: This article has been updated with more information.