LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Biden administration is trying to mitigate the expiration of a defunct broadband subsidy program that helped more than 23 million families afford internet access by using funds from an existing program that helps libraries and schools provide Wi-Fi hotspots to students and users.
Jessica Rosenworcel, chair of the Federal Communications Commission, told the Associated Press last week that the agency voted in July to “modernize” a federal program called E-Rate to fill at least some of the gaps left by the Affordable Connectivity Program, which provided low-income families with a monthly subsidy to purchase high-speed internet.
“Many of these households are at risk of a shutdown,” Rosenworcel said after visiting a Los Angeles elementary school. “We should be clear that it’s not always an on/off switch. It’s about sustainability.”
The Affordable Connectivity Program, part of a broader government initiative to provide affordable Internet access to every household and business in the country, was not renewed by Congress and ran out of funding earlier this year.
Mothers of students at Union Avenue Elementary School, whose student body is 93 percent Latino, told Rosenworcel their need for internet has never been greater. They said the cost of rent and food made it tough for them to maintain a consistent connection.
After listening to the mothers apply Wi-Fi in a McDonald’s parking lot to remotely attend doctor’s appointments, pay bills and provide their children with an internet connection for their online homework, Rosenworcel called their stories emotionally “harrowing.”
“Without that connection at home, it will be more difficult for that family and that child to cope in the modern world,” she said.
Launched in the 1990s, the E-Rate program has offered more than $7 billion in rebates to eligible schools and libraries since 2022 to lend a hand them afford broadband products and services. It provided benefits to more than 12,500 libraries, nearly half of them in rural areas, and 106,000 schools, according to an AP data analysis.
For the latest round of funding, the E-Rate program was expanded to include Wi-Fi on school buses. Starting next year, Rosenworcel said, the list of eligible products will be expanded to include Wi-Fi hotspots.
The Affordable Connectivity Program helped one in six families in the U.S. afford Internet access. Rosenworcel said the decision to include WiFi hotspots in E-Rate was partly a response to the failed extension of the subsidies.
“Every child needs internet access at home to truly thrive,” Rosenworcel said.
Alex Houff, who leads digital equity programs for the Baltimore County Public Library in Maryland, said the library started a WiFi hotspot lending program with about 50 devices just before the COVID-19 lockdown began in 2020. She said the program has grown to 1,000 devices, which is still not enough to meet demand. More than 160 people were waiting to apply a hotspot, Houff said.
“Most of the time we heard from branches that their communities were borrowing these hotspots because it was their only source of connectivity,” Houff said.
The biggest hurdle to connectivity is affordability, Houff said. She said the library system will apply for E-Rate funding to double the number of hotspots it offers its users.
The expansion of the program has not satisfied everyone. The two Republicans on the commission argued that E-Rate was intended to strengthen and support Internet access in the classroom, not at home or other places where students “may want to learn.”
“As far as I know, schools that have classrooms and libraries are physical places with addresses, not philosophical, conceptual ideas of instruction or education,” Republican Commissioner Nathan Simington said in a statement after the vote.
Rosenworcel, who took over as FCC chairman after President Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in the 2020 election, said Republican members’ description of where the program should apply was too restrictive.
After the FCC voted to expand Wi-Fi hotspots on school buses, a group of Republican senators supported a lawsuit challenging the agency’s decision. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who led the group of senators, said in a press release that the commission’s recent rule was an overreach that would “harm children by allowing them unsupervised access to the Internet.”
Disagreements between political parties are not the only threat to E-Rate. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals – the same court where Senator Cruz filed an amicus curiae brief about Wi-Fi on school buses – ruled in overdue July that the funding mechanism that supports E-Rate and other Internet access programs administered by the FCC, known as the Universal Service Fund, is unlawful.
“This Fifth Circuit decision has left a great deal of uncertainty about the future of the Universal Service Fund,” said John Windhausen, executive director of the Schools, Health and Libraries Broadband Coalition. “It’s a terrible decision, and it’s completely at odds with previous Supreme Court precedent and other appellate courts that have ruled just the opposite.”
Further legal proceedings are expected. The case could end up in the Supreme Court, Windhausen said.
Chairwoman Rosenworcel expressed her confidence in the integrity of the Universal Service Fund and called the Fifth Circuit’s decision “misguided and wrong.”
“It has done a lot of good for the United States to ensure that everyone has access to modern communications, no matter who they are or where they live,” Rosenworcel said.
Rosenworcel said the FCC could mobilize quickly if Congress simply renewed the Affordable Connectivity Program, which could be the easiest way to meet the need.
