Jon Healey

Researchers have found that salespeople offering free phone service through the California LifeLine Program often leave consumers in the dark about the trade-offs that come with it. In particular, each household can have only one account subsidized by LifeLine, and they can have only one supported by the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), the federal program which enables lower-income people to get free or deeply discounted broadband service.

Tim Hebb lives in one of more than 1.6 million households in Los Angeles that qualify for a new federal subsidy program for high speed internet service. And according to the Biden administration, he ought to be able to use that $30-a-month subsidy to get free access — 20 of the largest U.S. broadband providers had agreed to provide connections with up to 100 megabits-per-second download speeds for no more than the subsidy amount.

Lower-income Americans now have more options for free high-speed internet access, including at least eight providers that serve Southern California. The federal government launched the Affordable Connectivity Program at the end of 2021 to provide $30-per-month subsidies for households with incomes no more than twice the federal poverty level.

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted just how important it is to have a broadband internet connection at home — for remote school or work, virtual doctor’s exams and meetings and many other pursuits. But broadband can be costly, so the federal government offered new subsidies to help low-income households afford a high-speed line and a device with which to use it. Dozens of internet service providers all across California have signed up for the Emergency Broadband Benefit (EBB) program, which covers up to $50 of the monthly cost of an internet connection (or up to $75 on Tribal lands).

Internet service providers could not stop the California Legislature from passing tough state net neutrality rules. But they did manage to yank out most of the rules’ teeth. 

The revolutionary Fan TV set-top box and viewer guide will soon be available to Time Warner Cable customers across the country, marking the first formal roll-out of a product that delivers a combination of live TV, pay-TV services and online video on demand through a minimalist receiver.

Fan TV, which San Francisco-based start-up Fanhattan unveiled 11 months ago, is unusual in at least three respects. All the programming, including broadcast TV, is transmitted via Internet Protocol, à la an online video service such as Netflix. The viewer guide offers several different ways to find movies and TV shows, integrating "over the top" options from the Web with those from live TV.

And the Zen-inflected set-top is not only far more attractive than the typical cable box, its touch-controlled remote is a breakthrough in ease of use. The heart of Fan TV is the guide, whose combination of online offerings and live TV listings with reviews, social-media tools and other resources from the Web is unlike anything cable operators have offered to date.