The Winding Down of the FCC’s Affordable Connectivity Program: A Glimpse into the Digital Divide in US Education
By Catherine Tsairis ‘25
The Federal Communication Commission’s Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) is in the process of “winding down,” with the FCC announcing in a public notice on March 4, 2024 that April 2024 will be the last month that the ACP is fully funded. The FCC has stated that the program, which has helped to connect 23 million households across the nation with broadband internet service, needs additional funding from Congress in order to prevent the ACP’s end and stop millions from losing internet access. Despite the proposal of the Affordable Connectivity Program Extension Act in January 2024, this bicameral, bipartisan act—which would provide the ACP with $7 billion in funding—has stalled in the House.
According to FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel in a letter to congressional leaders from April 2, 2024 about the effects of the “imminent end” of the ACP, many individuals depend upon the ACP to “get online and stay online, including vulnerable seniors, veterans, school-aged children, and residents of rural and Tribal communities.” With students and schools comprising one of the groups that have benefited from the ACP, many families who are enrolled in the ACP are concerned about how a loss of internet access might affect their children’s academic experiences. In a survey of 1,600 ACP participants from fall 2023, 81% of parents in the ACP expressed concern that their children would “fall behind in their academics” if internet access in their household was lost. Also, according to D’Andre Weaver, the chief digital equity officer of nonprofit Digital Promise, schools have counted on the ACP to offer home internet services to students. The ACP has helped to improve connectivity and internet access for both students and schools, but according to Rosenworcel, the ACP’s wind down and potential end “will undo the significant progress this program has made towards closing the digital divide.”
A Brief Overview of the FCC’s Affordable Connectivity Program
Congress established the Emergency Broadband Benefit Program in 2020 as a COVID-relief measure, providing the FCC with $3.2 billion that would help increase the affordability of broadband internet services. Due to high demand and enrollment, Congress then extended the program under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2021 and renamed it to the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP).
The ACP offers eligible households a one-time discount to purchase a tablet or computer and also provides up to $30 monthly for internet service costs or up to $75 monthly for households on qualifying Tribal lands. There are multiple ways for a household to qualify, such as if a household’s income is at or below 200% of the Federal Poverty Guidelines, or if a household is enrolled in particular federal assistance programs or the Free and Reduced-Price School Lunch or School Breakfast Program. As of June 2023, the ACP had helped over 18 million households across the U.S. gain internet access, and the program had an enrollment of 23 million households as of February 2024.
How the ACP and its Wind Down Impacts Students and Their Families
One way that the ACP helps students and their families is by combating the “homework gap.” The “homework gap” is a term that is utilized to characterize the inequities that exist between students who do not have reliable home access to the Internet and digital devices and students who do. For students who do not have consistent internet and device access at home, this could make it more difficult for them to work on online school assignments. When discussing the ACP’s impact on students in the April 2, 2024 letter, Rosenworcel highlights the ACP’s “important role in addressing the Homework Gap.” She describes how students might “struggle to keep up with their assignments” due to the fact they “lack the broadband required to complete schoolwork at home.”
Rosenworcel emphasizes that a loss of internet service in the wake of the ACP’s wind down could “worsen the Homework Gap” and leave students “without the broadband they need to succeed in school.” With the ACP’s assistance, Rosenworcel writes that a multitude of students no longer had to access free Wi-Fi in places like library parking lots and could instead complete their online homework at home. However, without the ACP’s assistance, Chauntell Manahan, the director of technology for Steuben County Schools in Indiana, expressed her concern that “we’re going to have either more families not having access to those services, or more families having to go someplace with open Wi-Fi that maybe isn’t as secure as it should be.”
The loss of the ACP could affect parents as well as students. Manahan points out that in some households, parents might rely on using their child’s school-issued digital device for their own digital tasks—such as online telehealth appointments, completing coursework online, and more—since this device might be the sole digital device at home that can be utilized. Julia Fallon, executive director of the State Educational Technology Directors Association, also stressed that the loss of affordable internet services could put the communications between parents and the school at risk. Therefore, this disconnect could prevent parents from receiving vital information like updates about their child’s progress in school.
Contrasting Viewpoints on Potential Solutions for the ACP
On April 2, 2024, President Biden’s administration called on Congress to approve the extension of funding for the ACP. Stephen Benjamin, one of Biden’s senior advisers, stated during a press call on April 1, 2024 that “in the 21st Century, affordable, reliable, high-speed internet is essential [. . .] for Americans to participate in school, do their jobs, access health care and stay connected to loved ones.” In the April 2, 2024 letter, Rosenworcel also made it clear to congressional leaders that the FCC “remains ready to keep this program running, should Congress provide additional funding. We have come too far to allow this successful effort to promote internet access for all to end.”
However, if the ACP is not able to obtain the necessary extension and funding from Congress, several former FCC officials, including Affordable Broadband Campaign employees Greg Guice and Gigi Sohn, generated a different solution to the wind down of the ACP. They believe that a way to salvage a “version” of the ACP is to increase the scale of the Lifeline program to include a broadband subsidy, therefore stopping millions from losing their internet access if the ACP ends.
The Lifeline program, which is part of the FCC’s Universal Service Fund (USF), offers phone service discounts of $9.25 monthly (and up to $34.25 monthly on Tribal land) to eligible low-income individuals. Jonathan Chambers, a former FCC employer and Conexon Partner, detailed how this combined ACP and Lifeline program could work in his petition for expedited rulemaking that he submitted on February 20, 2024. Chambers’s recommendation for how the FCC could achieve this integration of the ACP into Lifeline would result in assistance for many of the individuals already enrolled in the ACP—although not for all.
However, Rosenworcel disapproves of this potential solution of adjusting Lifeline and the Universal Service Fund to “save” the ACP. She stated in a letter to Senator Ben Ray Luján from January 26, 2024 that she believed “expanding the USF contribution base by assessing broadband would result in an increase in the financial burden on consumers.” But Sohn argues that this potential solution is not the only path forward—another would be for the FCC to employ its “power of persuasion.” Sohn asserts that “it is uniquely in the FCC’s power to save the subsidy [. . .] It’s not a matter of whether the FCC has the tools. It's a matter of whether they have the will.”
The ACP’s future currently remains uncertain, but if the ACP does end, there is concern about what the impacts will be for the digital divide in the U.S. The loss of the ACP could also jeopardize the progress the program has made in promoting digital equity and helping low-income students gain more access to the digital classroom. Heather Gate, executive vice president of digital inclusion at the nonprofit Connected Nation, accentuates the significant stakes of the ACP’s possible end, stating that “23 million people is a lot of people that stand to lose something.” Gate continues on to express that it will be “very unfortunate” to “go backwards, given the [. . .] funding and the work that’s going towards bridging the digital divide and advancing digital equity.” While the question of the ACP’s fate lingers, the “winding down” of this program could not only have crucial implications for the nature of the U.S. digital divide, but also for the fates of other broadband subsidy programs as well.