Time to Stop Fraud In The Affordable Connectivity Program
Late last year, the FCC launched the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), a $14.2 billion project enacted through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA.) The ACP replaced the Emergency Broadband Benefit (EBB) program set up through COVID relief legislation.
The ACP establishes long-term investment in broadband affordability. These funds are intended to ensure every American household can access high-speed internet services that are essential for participation in virtual education, telehealth, work and other services. In real dollars and cents, the program creates a discount of up to $30 per month toward internet service for eligible households and up to $75 per month for households on qualifying Tribal lands. Additionally, eligible households can receive a one-time discount of up to $100 to purchase a laptop, desktop computer, or tablet from participating providers if they contribute more than $10 and less than $50 toward the purchase price.
Unfortunately, as with many federal programs of this size and scope, it is already clear that waste, fraud and abuse are real problems throughout this program. Earlier this month (just 9 months after the program launched) the FCC’s Office of Inspector General released a damning report outlining egregious examples of fraud in the ACP. Perhaps most egregiously, the report exposed some Internet providers are fraudulently enrolling households by providing identical information for multiple homes.
A particularly horrendous example in the report found more than one thousand households in Oklahoma were enrolled in the ACP using the same information of a single 4-year-old child — including the exact same date of birth, full name and last four digits of their Social Security Number. This allowed the unnamed Oklahoma provider to claim more than $365,000 in fraudulent reimbursements. Concerningly, this was not a one-off event, as the report details “one ACP provider collected nearly $230,000 for providing service to 997 ACP households enrolled based on the eligibility of the same 18-year old Medicaid recipient.”
Republican FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr responded to this report by calling for more accountability over these programs, stating, “I have been pushing for additional oversight and safeguards to ensure that we not only prevent bad actors from illegally lining their pockets with federal dollars but that these funds reach the families that Congress intended to benefit.”
In the days following the release of this report, the FCC is rightfully heeding the Commissioner’s call for reform. The agency is taking much needed (and overdue) steps to improve oversight and accountability of the ACP. But these oversight measures alone will not be enough to protect against further waste, fraud and abuse. Through the BEAD Program authorized by Congress, the NTIA will be allocating an unprecedented amount of funding to states for broadband deployment. As states vie for these resources they should also be taking steps to ensure there are systems in place to prevent fraud and misuse to be proper stewards of these resources.
States should create clearly defined benchmarks for funding received through the BEAD Program to ensure that unserved areas are being connected and reporting requirements established to improve accountability for these resources. It would also be wise for the states to set up tangible enforcement mechanisms to prevent corruption and fraud.
These broadband deployment programs are legislatively approved efforts to connect all Americans to the promise of Internet access. If these programs are going to exist, they must be paired with solid oversight and accountability. Without such safeguards these programs could turn into another government boondoggle building another bridge to nowhere.
I would also appreciate the opportunity to share a link to my Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/anthonychavez01 which has become a chronicle of sorts documenting my nearly decade-long & ongoing struggle to save my life under relentless assault by corrupt local & regional authorities including corrupt Lubbock PD Detective John Bentley who abused his access to a computer at FBI Regional Task Force offices located in the Mahon Federal Building at 1205 Texas Ave in Lubbock, Texas where he maliciously added me to an FBI Watchlist - former Plainview PD Chief Kenneth Coughlin, Sheriff David Cochran, PPD Capt Dennis Harkins & several other principle stalkers have all said "No one will help you because everyone believes you're a terrorist!" "We had you added to the FBI's Terrorism Watchlist." "We had you added to the FBI's Terror Database" and other similarly worded bravado. All point to a very specific day, December 5, 2019, as the day I was watchlisted. I had very recently, in the month prior, been subjected to an illegal, embarrassing, costly, & purely retaliatory arrest which according to PPD Capt. Dennis Harkins, was the promised consequence ordered by then PPD Chief Ken Coughlin should I send an email begging intervention by a reporter covering the region's municipal & county governments for the Lubbock AJ, the region's print daily with the largest circulation.
The arrest was devastating & financially ruinous. Shamefully, every city leader showed no hint of compassion for me nor my family, no interest in justice, no regard for our community, & no concern for the troubling conspiracy against freedom & justice coordinated by their police chief, nor for the outright criminal & civil rights violations by department rank & file officers who obeyed the chief's vindictive & retaliatory arrest order. Ignored, as always, by City & county leaders, I had no choice but to make the journey to Lubbock to report their crimes to the FBI Regional Task Force & intended to do exactly that on Dec 5, 2019. I waited that afternoon nearly 3 hours during which time Det. Bentley received at least 2 calls from Coughlin, Harkins, & Sheriff Cochran who had no trouble recruiting Bentley into their criminal conspiracy against my rights, their innocent victim. With no cause whatsoever & no wrongdoing on my part. Detective Bentley did, with knowledge malice, & intent to forever deprive me of my 1st, 4th, & 14th Amendment Rights, & to assure his friends that they would get away with several serious crimes which I had reported to Bentley in June of that same year & which he inexplicably chose to ignore. So, despite his first-hand knowledge that my complaints of serious crimes incl. 2 homicides, extensive, multi-agency coverups of both, a faked death by a local constable, were likely true since those same men had just proved that they were stalking me when they called the very office where I sat on the same day and at the same time that I waited. And if anyone should think, "Coincidence does not equal causation, nor guilt." My answer is maybe not, but calling a detective & task force member seeking his "help" to thwart a federal investigation they knew was imminent because they'd stolen a letter from the US Attorney for the Northern District of Texas informing me that she'd requested FBI investigate my complaints is undeniably criminal. In her letter US Attorney Erin Nealy Cox requested my patience because all other cases referred by law enforcement prior to her referral of mine could not be deprioritized. She estimated that meant a December start at the earliest. Barely able to recover financially from the expensive arrest & unnecessary & expensive impounding of a family vehicle weeks earlier, it would be Dec. 5 before I could afford the drive to Lubbock only to be added to a FBI Watchlist by the cowardly & corrupt Lubbock Detective John Bentley.
It's outrageous that so much obvious fraud went undetected. Those responsible need to be prosecuted. My household knows how important the ACP is. We could not afford our 300MBps residential service from Optimum which costs about $130/mo. without it. What is important to know is that the program smartly leverages the federal investment by generating a massive pool of tens of millions of new customers waving a giant gift card with a $14 BILLION credit balance. That $14B is a game changer. Without the assurance it offers, ISPs large & small have little motivation to dispatch field technicians to install the latest equipment in households trapped in poverty. Experience has taught them that such installations require more time because poorer neighborhoods have poorer infrastructure & people living in poverty are often completely unfamiliar with managing our own network which translates into much more frequent calls to ISPs seeking assistance with restoring a lost connection, & frequent calls from customers frustrated by slow connections, customers who understandably become even more frustrated when support agents ask questions which seem unnecessary, intrusive or even accusatory. "Ok, it looks like your network is over-burdened by 22 devices simultaneously connected to your network including a variety of streaming devices. Did you share your network password with neighbors?" for example. That isn't to say that the poor are stupid. But as with anything unfamiliar, there is a steep learning curve. Upper-class & middle-class households are typically led by at least 1 professional, paraprofessional or small business owner. They are very likely to have grown up in wired (internet-connected) middle class households where the language of networks & networking technology was familiar & even the youngest household member knew they could resolve just about any problem simply by power cycling their router. Such households require little-to-no assistance from their ISP's. Such self-managed internet experience translates into increased satisfaction for customers whose record of network self-management combined with their reliable clock-work payment history & good credit make them ideal customers which ISPs recognize & value. That easy relationship between valued customer & motivated provider forms a sort of economic symbiosis which is mutually rewarding & self-reinforcing.
Until now, that experience has led every ISP to believe that their success depended upon retaining that essential customer base while finding new customers from the same or similar socioeconomic strata.
The ACP's $14Billion dollar investment has all but erased legitimate concerns about negative ROI by ISP CFOs & has effectively taken program participant credit scores out of the equation. Removing just these 2 barriers - for what government economists & industry analysts alike agree is likely to be at least the next ½ decade - has been enough to convince CEOs to see a future where millions of newly-empowered, internet-wired households rise out of poverty. These CEOs & industry experts predict we will come to agree with what more than 85% of Americans households have long known - in the 21st century internet at home is an essential service; one which no household can do without.