The GOP Is Blocking A Last Ditch Effort To Bring Cheap Broadband To Poor Americans
The FCC’s Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), part of the 2021 infrastructure bill, currently provides 23+ million low-income Americans a $30 broadband discount every month. But those 23 million Americans are poised to soon lose the discount because key Republicans — who routinely dole out billions of dollars on far dumber fare — refuse to fund a $4-$7 billion extension.
As a result, the FCC is informing struggling Americans that their broadband bills are all about to jump significantly as the program starts to wind down. There’s a last ditch effort to save the program, but it’s unclear if it has traction in one of the least productive Congress’ in U.S. history:
“Speaking at an event hosted by USTelecom on Thursday, FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks called the ACP “the most effective program we’ve ever had” for incentivizing low-cost internet plans, and he mourned the fact that its time could be running out.”
The ACP’s death is an interesting case because the telecom industry generally supports it, many Republicans support it, and many Democrats support it.
Big ISPs support it because it basically involves throwing money at them to temporarily reduce broadband prices that wouldn’t be high in the first place if big ISPs hadn’t spent the last 40 years lobbying to crush competition and regulatory oversight (usually with the help of corrupt centrist Democrats and Republicans).
But a handful of Republicans, nervous that the popular program could help Democrats during an election season, are engaging in obstructionism. House Speaker Mike Johnson appears to be slow walking the emergency funding proposal to death.
Most “both sides” news orgs, always wary of upsetting sources and advertisers, lack the courage to inform readers the program is being specifically killed by Republicans. And given these kinds of bread and butter issues don’t generate clicks and ad engagement in the attention infotainment economy, many outlets just won’t cover it at all.
Republicans claim their concern is about costs but it’s not, really; you’ll recall the Trump tax cuts doled out $42 billion to AT&T alone in exchange for a bunch of layoffs. These same Republicans routinely throw absurd gobs of money at all sorts of ideological dipshittery and badly managed corporate handouts. The fiscal conservatism is a performance the press is happy to help parrot to the public.
Some ISPs, like Verizon, say they’ll continue to offer discounts to poor people for about six months even after the program ends. At which point poor Americans are just shit out of luck, and their monthly bill will return to its usual expensive state, potentially driving them offline.
The $42.5 billion in infrastructure bill broadband subsidies flowing to the states try to at least nudge big ISPs to offer a cheaper, low-income broadband plan if they take taxpayer money, but they’re lobbying to have those requirements killed.
Ideally you wouldn’t need such requirements or programs like the ACP (that temporarily and artificially lower rates) if we had policymakers with the political courage to take direct aim at the real problem: highly concentrated monopoly power and the corruption and regulatory capture that protects it.
That’s what causes broadband competitive market failure and high prices across much of the U.S., but Congress and the FCC can’t even admit it exists, much less propose a solution that might offend telecom giants closely tethered to our domestic surveillance systems. The ACP was a backup plan to do the bare minimum for the least fortunate; and Congress couldn’t even accomplish that.