The Affordable Connectivity Program: Additional Funding from Congress is Needed Before Year End 2023
There is a rising tide of support for Congress to provide permanent funding for the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) — a program that currently ensures that over 19.5 million low-income families can purchase broadband service, which is critical for accessing job, education, and health information and is an absolute necessity to participate in today’s economy and society.
The ACP is expected to exhaust its funding in the first half of next year, and without action before the end of 2023, we can expect that the FCC and the program’s stakeholders will begin the process of winding down the program. Recognizing that families will likely disconnect their service, or face unaffordable price increases, a significant number of policy leaders and other stakeholders — including INCOMPAS — are urging Congress to act to shore up the program as highlighted below.
At its summer meeting in July, the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) adopted a resolution that calls on Congress to provide permanent annual funding for the ACP after citing numerous reasons why it makes good policy sense to do so. Similarly, the U.S. Conference of Mayors also adopted a resolution at its annual meeting in June that urges Congress to renew and extend the ACP’s funding as doing so will help strengthen the U.S. economy, among other important reasons. In addition, we have seen two letters to policy makers with significant numbers of stakeholder signatures that urge Congressional action to add funds to the ACP. In May, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights wrote a letter to Congressional Appropriations leaders to request robust funding for the ACP, which included 165 civil society organizations, municipal governments, and other interested stakeholders. And this month, the No Home Left Offline Coalition sent a letter to every governor in the nation asking them to tell Congress “to take urgent action to renew the ACP.” Each letter sets forth the number of households in each state that participates in the program, and explains how the program helps lower the costs of deployment (which is important for the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program that is investing over $40 billion to reach every unserved/underserved location in the U.S.), and how the ACP works hand in glove with the states’ BEAD and digital equity plans to make broadband service affordable in each state for low-income families.
A majority of governors already have recognized the importance of the program in delivering affordable broadband service in their states, which is helping to grow their economies, among many other benefits. To learn more about each governor’s perspective, see their individual statements here: Governors Prioritizing Affordable Connectivity Program Adoption (educationsuperhighway.org).
Others who have written Congress to support additional funding for the ACP include the Hispanic Technology and Telecommunications Partnership, representing the most influential national Hispanic organizations in the U.S., and the Consortium for Constituents with Disabilities Technology & Telecommunications Task Force, representing the most influential national organizations that advocate on behalf of children and adults with disabilities. And the Commissioner for Agriculture in West Virginia, Kent Leonhardt, is urging the state’s Congressional delegation to support the ACP in an op-ed, explaining how “[t]he benefits of this program for those living in rural areas, especially farmers, are enormous.”
In terms of federal policymakers who are raising the alarm and calling for additional ACP funding, FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks has taken the lead. At INCOMPAS’ Policy Summit in March, he called for sustainable funding for the ACP stating, “with enrollment picking up, we’ll need to address the longevity of the program’s funding before too long. We’re much better off addressing the issue quickly and with certainty — and there are three basic reasons why that is so.” First, we must keep the millions of Americans who have signed up for the program secure in their access to broadband. Second, there are millions more who are eligible, and we need to get them signed up. Third, we need to move quickly to secure ACP so that our BEAD dollars go as far as possible and succeed in connecting every unserved and underserved home.
Likewise, Joseph Wender, Director of the Capital Projects Fund at the Treasury Department, which is in charge of funding network deployment throughout the U.S., stated in an early June panel, “we have to renew the ACP. There is no alternative here.” He explained that there would be a “cascading effect” if Congress does not act because the ACP helps ensure that broadband is affordable for all, and the deployment programs and the ACP are co-dependent.
NTIA Administrator Alan Davidson, who is managing the BEAD program, also explained before a House oversight hearing in May how the ACP and BEAD programs are complementary, that the ACP is critical to meeting the nation’s goal of eliminating the digital divide, and declared that “[w]e won’t be able to reach our goal of affordable networks without it.”
FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel also warned Congress in a House oversight hearing in June that the FCC will “have to make hard decisions about what kind of choices will need to be made to wind this program down if Congress does not provide an additional appropriation.” She called for Congress to avoid that result by providing more funding.
And it is not just Democrats who are concerned about the ACP running out of funds and the impact that will have on families’ connectivity. Eight Republican Senators also have recognized the importance of continuing to fund the program and sent a letter to President Biden in June seeking to repurpose unobligated COVID funds to the ACP. Led by Senate Commerce Committee member Roger Wicker (R-MS) and joined by Senators Mike Crapo (R-ID), Kevin Cramer (R-ND), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), J.D. Vance (R-OH), James Risch (R-ID), and Todd Young (R-IN), the letter states that as the BEAD deployments “become operational, the significance of the Affordable Connectivity Program will become even more important as it ensures our constituents can benefit from these historic investments in connectivity.”
The House Committee on Appropriations also included in its Report on the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Bill for 2024 a commendation for the FCC’s work on the ACP and requests a report on the progress of the ACP within 30 days, indicating interest and support for the program from House appropriators.
During opening remarks for MMTC’s former FCC Chairs’ Symposium in July, Rep. Steven Horsford (D-NV), Chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, called on Congress to provide additional funding for the ACP, and all the panelists agreed, including former FCC Chairman Richard Wiley, former FCC Commissioner and Acting Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn, and former FCC Commissioner and former RUS Administrator Jonathan Adelstein. Other notable supporters of the ACP include former FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly as well as Blair Levin who was the Executive Director of the FCC’s National Broadband Plan. In an interview in June, Mr. Levin emphasized the importance of additional funding for the program by stating if we end the program: “[t]he United States of America is positioned to take the single largest step backward in terms of widening the digital divide of any country since the beginning of the internet.”
On July 31, the Chairs of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, Congressional Black Caucus, and Congressional Hispanic Caucus sent a letter to the Biden-Harris Administration urging its support for replenishing the funding for the ACP. “The Biden-Harris Administration has consistently led on internet access and affordability issues and has done more to close the digital divide than its predecessors,” wrote Chairs Judy Chu (CA-28), Steven Horsford (NV-04), and Nanette Barragán (CA-44). “We urge you to support replenishing ACP funding to sustain and build on this important building block to help us overcome the digital divide.”
ACP subscribers and the broadband providers that serve them need certainty, and they need it fast. As the FCC Chairwoman discussed, the agency and the providers will need to begin making plans for winding down the program in the coming months in order to provide adequate notice to subscribers of upcoming changes. All of this can be avoided with clear and precise action from Congress to renew ACP funding. Congress should take this opportunity to listen to the tremendous support from all stakeholders including industry, trade groups, public interest organizations, and the federal and state governments that are all calling on Congress to refund this vital program. Refunding the ACP must be a top priority of Congress when it returns from August recess.
