from the if-you-build-it,-they-will-come dept
Last year Trumplicans killed a popular program that provided poor people with $30 off of their monthly broadband bill. The FCC’s Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) was, unsurprisingly, very popular, with more than 23 million Americans benefitting at its peak.
At the time, the GOP claimed they were simply looking to save money. The real reason the program was killed, of course, was that the ACP was popular with their constituents (the majority of ACP participants were in red states) and they didn’t want Dems to take credit during an election season.
A recent report by The Brattle Group actually found that the $7-$8 billion annual taxpayer cost of the program generated between $28.9 and $29.5 billion in savings thanks to expanded access to affordable internet, remote work opportunities, online education tools, and remote telehealth services. In other words: the program more than paid for itself via downstream benefits (something DOGE dudebros and other Trump cultists have a hard time getting their heads around).
When the program was killed, 23 million Americans suddenly faced significantly higher broadband bills. In some states, community broadband networks have been filling the void. Like in Longmont, Colorado, where the local community-owned Nextlight broadband network has been offering low-income families dirt cheap broadband access.
Because it’s actually interested in serving the community instead of exploiting it, Nextlight’s broadband speeds and pricing are already much cheaper than you’d see from a regional monopoly like Comcast or AT&T. But their low-income plans are even cheaper, with the town offering symmetrical 100 Mbps broadband for $15 a month, and symmetrical gigabit broadband for $45 a month:
According to Longmont officials, the low-income discounts applied to their community-owned broadband network (which just reached 28,000 users total) now reach 14 percent more low-income locals than the FCC’s ACP did:
“The IAP provides qualified households a $25 a month discount. 906 NextLight customers received the federal discount before the ACP ran out of funds. There are currently 1,034 customers taking advantage of the IAP discount.”
That a town built its own broadband network and offers most residents super fast, very cheap fiber access is a pretty cool thing that simply… doesn’t get the kind of policy or press attention it deserves. It’s an interesting example of broadband being treated as an important utility and not exclusively a profit-seeking business, and it’s an example of government directly and efficiently working for the people. And a bipartisan coalition of people being supportive and generally happy about it!
I think it’s also a useful example of the potential, highly localized future we could build if the federal government is going to continue to be too insane, incompetent, and corrupt to function.
When Republicans killed the program the press had a hard time actively blaming Republicans. Most articles just blamed a vague “congressional refusal to fund the program.” It’s part of a toxic, propaganda-laden modern media environment where modern Republicans rarely have agency or are required to take real ownership of their own unpopular policies that harm very real people.
It’s worth remembering that Republicans also tried to ban community broadband during the height of COVID, just when these networks were demonstrating their effectiveness. They didn’t do this out of any functional value system; they did it to protect shitty regional telecom monopolies from better, cheaper, faster service with better, more local customer support.
It’s not a panacea (building these kinds of networks can be complicated, expensive, and tricky to manage), but this model of locally-owned fiber networks (especially when they’re open access) often genuinely works to boost broadband quality and lower prices. It’s the kind of government-driven “abundance” guys like Ezra Klein claim to be clamoring for, yet the efforts still aren’t getting the attention they deserve in press and policy circles.
Filed Under: ACP, affordability, Affordable Connectivity Program, broadband, fcc, fiber, gigabit, low income, municipal
