Affordability/Cost/Price

The Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) sees the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program as Virginia’s opportunity to finish the job of extending broadband access and also make long-term, transformational investments into broadband affordability and adoption. With the $1.48 billion in BEAD funds for Virginia, DHCD is finalizing plans to extend broadband infrastructure to the remaining unserved locations without a funded solution for connectivity and designing programs to meaningfully address broadband affordability and adoption.

The Federal Communications Commission's Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) is a means-tested federal program launched in January 2022 to support broadband connectivity among low-income households in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The expiration of the ACP benefit, the largest ever consumer support program for telecommunication services in U.S. history, invites a discussion about the impact of the program and what alternative policy mechanisms exist to promote equitable access to broadband.

In 2021, Congress enacted the Digital Equity Act (DEA) as part of the massive Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA). This marked the first time that federal lawmakers had dedicated funding specifically for digital equity programming, providing money for state broadband offices to analyze the digital equity landscape in their states and develop plans to reduce the barriers to accessing such critical service. For the first time, all 50 states; Washington, D.C.; and Puerto Rico created digital equity plans under the planning grant program.

Areas with poor or no broadband service often also suffer from a lack of competition among Internet providers, which can also lead to higher costs for consumers. “Only about 60 percent of all locations nationwide have competition,” remarked Joe Ross, senior partner and co-founder of Televate LLC, which provides Internet consulting services for government.

On October 1, Federal Communications Commissioner (FCC) Anna Gomez spoke at Americas Spectrum Management Conference in Washington, DC. She spoke about several issues, including spectrum sharing and the National Spectrum Strategy, and urged conference goers to keep the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) top of mind in their discussions. She also spoke about the history of the FCC's spectrum auction authority, which has been lapsed for over a year.

There is a political consensus that the United States should continue its nearly century long commitment to assuring that the tools of modern communications are universally accessible and affordable. There is also a consensus that the primary program through which we keep that commitment—the Federal Communications Commission’s Universal Service Fund (USF)—is breaking down.

In June 2024, ConnectRI, a program of the Rhode Island Commerce Corporation (RICC) released the final and approved version of the state's Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program Initial Proposal Volume II.

Is broadband service in the U.S. affordable? This question has dominated public discourse in recent years as policymakers have focused on, and allocated significant resources towards, closing the country’s digital divide once and for all. But determining the “affordability” of something is highly subjective and thus not amenable to a neat one-size-fits-all definition arrived at by central planners.

More than nine out of 10 American households now have an internet subscription, according to new Census data released on Sep 12. That's a significant leap forward from the 76.7% the Census Bureau reported in 2015. When you dig into the census numbers, it becomes clear that the majority of new internet subscribers came from the lowest income groups.

Funding for the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) lapsed in May 2024, ending a monthly subsidy that 23 million households nationwide had been using to afford high-speed internet connections. The program’s lapse means many rural, low-income, and other vulnerable households are losing access to internet connections.