Lessons and Recommendations for Effective Affordability Outreach
Tuesday, September 16, 2025
Digital Beat
Lessons and Recommendations for
Effective Affordability Outreach
People are more likely to believe and act on information delivered by a “trusted messenger”—this was the rationale behind a federal government grant program to promote awareness and increase participation in the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP).1
The Federal Communications Commission established the Affordable Connectivity Program Outreach Grant Program in August 2022, targeting low-income households, underserved populations, rural and tribal populations, and other communities with low ACP participation rates. Eligible applicants, including government and non-government entities, could compete for awards in four sub-programs. Grantees were to share information about and assist eligible households in applying for the ACP benefit.
Research evaluating the effectiveness and efficacy of the ACP has primarily addressed topics such as eligibility and enrollment rates, impacts on broadband adoption, and benefits to enrolled households. Examining the experiences of outreach grantees adds to what we know about how to maximize enrollment in affordable broadband programs, so that benefits materialize across the greatest number of people and communities. To this end, Hanim Astuti conducted a qualitative interview study of ACP Outreach Grant recipients. The lessons and recommendations we present here draw on her interviews with 24 study participants representing 20 awardee organizations2 based in 16 states.
Outreach Grantees Reached Communities Unlikely to Otherwise Learn About and Enroll in ACP
The FCC allocated about $80 million across two funding rounds for ACP outreach grants. The National Competitive Outreach Program (NCOP) targeted nationwide outreach, while the Tribal Competitive Outreach Program (TCOP) focused on outreach to tribal communities. The first round resulted in $73.47 million awarded to 221 organizations, primarily for the NCOP. In the second round, the FCC granted an additional $4.3 million in NCOP awards to twelve organizations and $1.2 million through the Tribal Competitive Outreach Program (TCOP) to five organizations. Two additional pilot grant programs, Your Home, Your Internet and the ACP Navigator Pilot Program targeted recipients of federal housing assistance and enabled trusted entities to access the National Verifier to assist with enrollment, respectively.
Study participants indicated that the people and communities they contacted about ACP did not have strong trust in the government. For communities with longer histories of distrust and harm related to the government, ACP outreach was important to communicate what could be beneficial about the program—otherwise, negative perceptions presented real barriers that kept people from learning about the program and enrolling in it.
“The most common objections we got from folks were distrust of the government, especially from our Tribal communities . . . ‘This is just one more program that's not really for us.’”
The low-income Americans that ACP was intended to help also included groups with heightened sensitivity to privacy and skepticism of something that might sound too good to be true. Outreach grantees helped eligible people assess the cost of sharing personal information with the government and assured them that the benefit was real.
“Related to the distrust was also not wanting to share their information, so more privacy, and not wanting the government to have additional information on them.”
“How do we make people aware of [ACP]? How do we get them to understand that, you know, because it's a trust and safety issue, too. People don't often sign up for things that are ‘free’ because they don't trust [them].”
Most participants reported that their organizations had partnered with other organizations to extend their reach. A variety of partnerships enabled grantees to conduct outreach in additional spaces, leverage the reputations and relationships of other organizations, and disseminate awareness more broadly within communities.
Outreach Revealed Shortcomings in Internet Service Providers’ Promotion of ACP
If messaging directly from the federal government would be hampered by issues of trust and negative perceptions, promotion from internet service providers (ISPs) presented some similar problems. Again, the sense of ACP being too good to be true raised suspicion.
“If they [eligible individuals] heard about the program through vendors, ISPs, that they didn't trust, they were very skeptical that it was really a good deal for them. They thought they were getting scammed.”
Negative past experiences that people had with ISPs caused wariness. While ISP representatives did share information with actual and potential customers about ACP, customer service operations were not necessarily equipped to help people navigate eligibility verification and enrollment:
“A lot of people were getting frustrated when they did call their ISP, because they just got bounced around.”
“Even if they did get approved, then you had the issues of the ISPs not accepting …verification number[s] or ISPs that didn't even know about the program.”
Customer service representatives trained to sell internet service also (unsurprisingly) behaved like salespeople, upselling ACP recipients on plans:
“[The ISPs] had people who didn't know enough about the program. And so when you came in with your verifier number, and you said, ‘I want my discount on my service,’ they would say, ‘Yeah, okay. But you know you have a very low speed. Let's boost your speed up and use this.’ So say you were paying $100 for your Internet, they would still apply the $30 which you would then think you'd be paying $70 right? But no, they would then boost your internet to a higher speed. And there goes the $30.”
In short, ISPs’ efforts to get customers enrolled in ACP could be limited by a lack of knowledge about the program and the orientation towards sales that their customer service operations typically have.
ACP Termination Likely Worsened the Trust Situation and Spread it to Outreach Grantees
When the government ceased accepting ACP applications in February 2024 and the program came to a complete end in June, it left ACP recipients and outreach grantees in a challenging situation. Recipients lost their discounts on service. The organizations funded to promote ACP, though not involved in the government’s decision to end the program, were now associated with this loss.
“A lot of people were confused and upset about [the termination], or really, it's just confusion, because it looks bad on us as an organization. It looks bad on the government, and programs that they're running. It just builds distrust in the community.”
“April was gonna come, and then [ACP recipients] would get their May bill, and it was gonna be high and they were gonna feel like we had misled them. It’s going to make it harder next time. So the next time we have a program where we can offer something like this to people that they're gonna have that [bad] taste in their mouth.”
In other words, ACP’s end left outreach grantees in a tough position: trusted messengers for a benefit that dried up.
Recommendations for Effective Affordability Outreach
With the June 6, 2025 changes to the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program, ISPs receiving awards, referred to as “subgrantees,” will be left to develop and offer their own low-cost service options. The law specifies that subgrantees have to provide public notice about new services that they offer, as well as publicize why households should adopt broadband. But the law is silent on any requirements to promote low-cost service options. Our research suggests that ISPs may show significant variation in their efforts to advertise these options to all eligible households and to facilitate easy enrollment across customer service operations.
If states opt to use their own resources to increase adoption of these plans, we propose that the trusted messenger strategy be part of their outreach efforts. Although residents may think differently of state government than they do of the federal government, new low-cost plans will be associated with the BEAD Program and thereby linked in some way to the federal government. Additionally, given the numerous changes to social safety net programs such as SNAP and Medicaid, which will generally increase expenses for low-income households, information about affordable broadband service may be better delivered by entities seen as unrelated to those changes.
For the trusted messenger strategy to be effective, consistency and clarity about the terms of low-cost plans are crucial. At present, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) says that BEAD awardees must offer a low-cost plan for 10 years. The cost of the plan may increase over time if the subgrantee provides a satisfactory explanation about how it will calculate rate increases. Under ideal conditions, trusted messengers would be able to share information about how much costs will increase; however, NTIA is allowing BEAD awardees to tie increases to future inflation or rate benchmark survey results. While the low-cost plans would seem to have far greater longevity than the ACP subsidy, the federal regulatory environment is also fraught at this time. States should share as much information as possible with trusted messengers about potential changes to low-cost plans and work with them to develop messaging that helps eligible populations understand and weigh their options for affordable broadband in the short and long term.
If ISPs are the primary advertisers of low-cost plans, we recommend that states consider some basic reporting and accountability measures. The goal of such measures should be to share information about the low-cost plan with the broadest possible swath of eligible households and to facilitate their enrollment. Regular submission of counts of households enrolled in these plans would provide minimal information about how well the plans are utilized. Our research suggests that counts of customers receiving any information about the plans would also be a telling indication about ISPs’ outreach efforts. Additional accountability measures might dictate that an ISP make information available about the low-cost plan alongside its market-rate service options, or to all visitors to its subscription signup webpage.
For ISPs’ outreach to be effective, efforts must also counter the perception that low-cost plans are “too good to be true” or a scam. Early findings from a follow-up interview study with ACP recipients suggest that eligible households may want to confirm that ISP offers are real by looking up information shared on government websites. For this reason, we recommend states consider sharing as much information as possible (e.g., eligibility criteria, plan specifications, and pricing) about low-cost plans on a single webpage. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act directs NTIA to create a website for consumers to check eligibility for federal and state broadband subsidies and for low-cost plans; however, states’ efforts to gather and publish this information will also contribute to consumers’ perception of credibility.
Affordability programs are most effective when the highest number of eligible people can learn about them, find the effort of enrolling to be worth the benefit, and actually utilize the benefit. The ACP Outreach Grant program was designed on these bases, and we can learn a great deal from its implementation. Future outreach for affordability programs that improves on that experience will work towards the goal of getting all low-income Americans connected to affordable home broadband.
Notes
- Funding for the ACP expired on June 1, 2024; funding for ACP outreach was formally terminated, abruptly ending both the benefit for low-income households and the outreach efforts to reach those not yet enrolled.
- Most had received the NCOP grant.
Dr. Caroline Stratton is the Research Director for the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society.
Hanim Astuti is a PhD candidate at the School of Information at Florida State University. Her research focuses on digital equity and broadband policy. She examines institutional factors that shape broadband availability and individual-level challenges that influence broadband adoption.
The Benton Institute for Broadband & Society is a non-profit organization dedicated to ensuring that all people in the U.S. have access to competitive, High-Performance Broadband regardless of where they live or who they are. We believe communication policy - rooted in the values of access, equity, and diversity - has the power to deliver new opportunities and strengthen communities.
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