A Winning Approach To Closing the Digital Divide

Guest Post by Joel Thayer, President of the Digital Progress Institute

We are excited to have another guest post from friend and freedom fighter Joel Thayer, President of the Digital Progress Institute.

Bringing affordable broadband to every American and closing the digital divide has been a longtime bipartisan goal for more than two decades. Lawmakers recognized that digital was the future and put in place a commitment to universal service—the principle that every American should be able to participate in the digital economy and the opportunities it brings. However, still too many live on the wrong side of the digital divide. According to federal data, 8.3 million Americans do not have access to high-speed broadband services. However, 24 million households that do have access to broadband are still not online, with affordability being a significant factor.

What’s more, access to broadband is now a key indicator of economic opportunity, because it allows access to online educational tools. This is especially true for those in traditional minority groups. A study conducted by Deutsche Bank found that Black and Hispanic communities without access to broadband are more likely to be underprepared for 86 percent of the jobs that will be available by 2045.

In other words, adults on the wrong side of the digital divide have a more difficult time accessing continuing education, employment opportunities, and even making a doctor’s appointment. 

The good news is we have developed a program to tackle this issue head-on. 

In 2021, Congress—via the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act—created the Affordable Connectivity Program (“ACP”) to address broadband affordability. The ACP—administered by the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”)—ensures that economically vulnerable populations can participate in today’s economy. Generally, the ACP invests $14.2 billion to provide both discounted internet services to families and financial assistance of up to $30 per month for eligible households and $75 per month for qualifying households on tribal lands. 

In just two short years, the ACP now provides 18.5 million households with affordable broadband. Even more impressive is that enrollment is high in both rural and urban areas. For example, 29% of Kentuckians in the heart of Appalachia (KY-05) are enrolled as are 25% of Louisianans in rural parishes (LA-05). Congressional districts in urban areas, such as in Los Angeles (CA-22) and in and around Jacksonville (FL-04), are similarly high with enrollment rates of 31% and 17%, respectively.

This program is widely popular and it’s easy to see why. For one, the ACP relies on the tried-and-true voucher system that allows consumers to choose the plan or service provider they want. Jeff Westling at the American Action Forum provided an insightful review of ACP’s effectiveness over the FCC’s Lifeline—a legacy program designed to address affordability—that may also give indications as to why the ACP is resonating so well with folks. He writes ACP has superior qualities to that of Lifeline due to:

Its voucher-like nature and sustainable funding mechanism, combined with Congress’ direct oversight of the program, ensure that it can assist low-income Americans in acquiring the broadband plan that best fits their needs without significant risk of waste, fraud and abuse. By allowing consumers to shop around, the program also incentivizes future deployment and competition among broadband providers.

The ACP’s effectiveness can also be attributed to its targeted focus on affordability. As Dr. Edward Longe of the James Madison Institute points out, the “ACP has also been remarkably successful in targeting low-income communities and households that would struggle to meet the cost of service.”

One problem, the ACP will run out of funds early next year. This means that millions of people will be forced to pay the full tilt if they want to keep their broadband service—a price many can’t afford. Worse, as Westling rightly points out, “allowing the [ACP] to expire, regulators will likely be forced to rely on outdated programs such as Lifeline to fill affordability gaps, and the improvements of ACP over these outdated subsidy models will be lost.” Longe also notes that the impacts in states, like Florida, can be drastic. He notes that Congress’s “failure to fund the program beyond 2024 could send millions across the country and over 1.3 million Floridians back to the digital dark age.”

The good news is that reauthorizing the ACP is incredibly bipartisan. A recent poll from Public Opinion Strategies and RG Strategies found that a strong, bipartisan majority of voters (78 percent) support continuing the ACP, including 64 percent of Republicans, 70 percent of Independents, and 95 percent of Democrats. This result correlates well with the data that shows that the states with the highest enrollment rates are a healthy mix of both “red” and “blue” states. 

More good news on the bipartisan front is that not only has the White House launched its “all of government” ACP enrollment drive to get more low-income Americans online, but Republican senators Roger Wicker (MS), Mike Crapo (ID), Kevin Cramer (ND), Thom Tilllis (NC), Shelley Moore Capito (WV), J.D. Vance (OH), Jim Risch (ID), and Todd Young (IN) have also sent a letter to the President encouraging him to repurpose unobligated COVID-19 relief funds to replenish the ACP to ensure their “constituents and communities can access crucial broadband services.”

Although ACP’s fate is uncertain, these bipartisan efforts and acknowledgments of the importance the program plays in closing the digital divide are encouraging developments indeed. What’s more, the bipartisan support for ACP further demonstrates that closing the digital divide is not a partisan issue, but a unifying objective that all Americans can get behind.