TECHNOLOGY
With no confirmed funding to continue the Affordable Connectivity Program, millions of homes face higher internet service fees, putting access to income, education and health care at risk
FOR ELLIMAE KALINOSKI AND HER FAMILY, THE internet is a lifeline. She and her husband, who cannot work because of long COVID, get discounted web access through the Affordable Connectivity Program, which they also use to homeschool their autistic son.
Now funding for the ACP is set to run out, the parents are worried they soon won’t be able to afford broadband access.
“It’s incredibly needed,” Kalinoski told Newsweek. “[The ACP] allowed us to continue to homeschool our autistic son—who absolutely needs to be homeschooled—and we are able to keep in touch with family and friends ... because we can use FaceTime without spending extra money on our phone plan.”
She worries “not just for us, but for many, many people like us that need that extra income for food or health or supplies.”
Internet service fees are set to rise for 23 million American households after the Biden administration’s request for continued funding of the ACP fell on deaf ears in Congress. The program had been allocated $14.2 billion in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed in November 2021, and provides discounts on monthly internet bills to low-income and rural households. However, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently warned it was running out of money.
In October, the Biden administration requested an additional $6 billion from Congress to keep the ACP going until December this year. But with House leadership struggling to get its own appropriation bills passed, the call has yet to be answered.
In a letter to legislators on January 8, FCC chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said that “if Congress does not provide additional funding for the ACP in the near future, millions of households will lose the ACP benefit that they use to afford internet service. This also means that roughly 1,700 internet service providers will be affected by the termination of the ACP and may cut off service to households no longer supported by the program.”
For Carrie Guida, executive director of the Pine River Group Home, which provides residential and community-based care for people with disabilities in central Minnesota, an affordable internet connection is often essential to providing for their rural clients.
She explained that federal rules require staff to verify their visits electronically on a system that geolocates them, leaving them to rely on their cell phone connection—which “can be really spotty”—or their client’s home internet connection.
“If there’s no internet service at that location, it’s hard to document those [visits] in a compliant way
