In the digital age, fast and reliable internet is vital to participation in society. American jobs, safety, and connectivity rely on the speed and consistency of broadband connections. The federal government has established a number of funding programs to address the digital divide and connect the millions of Americans without  affordable and reliable access. The consequence of this initiative is a collection of overlapping  programs, with seven separate agencies running twenty five of them. The overlap creates waste by using valuable funding in an inefficient manner.

Recently, the Biden Administration called for more funding for the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP). The ACP was established in 2021 and is run by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). It provides discounts to eligible low income households on internet service and devices such as laptops and iPads, and Louisianans are top ACP participants given the state’s high rate of poverty. The ACP is scheduled to end this year and is no longer accepting new members as of February 8th.

In response to the call for more funding to extend the ACP, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr noted that less than 20% of ACP enrollees were first time subscribers. The FCC failed to prioritize offline households and used the majority of the funding on homes that were already online. While the program might be helping to keep low-income households connected, the ACP in its current form is not closing the digital divide as it is failing to connect new people to the internet.

The goal of the ACP was simple: provide discounts on internet service and connected devices  so that more Americans can be online. The execution was poor in that internet service providers were allowed to verify enrollee eligibility themselves, often resulting in confusion and fraud. This was a result of the scattered and vague rules surrounding enrollment and eligibility, which the Government Accountability Office highlighted in a 2023 report. Additionally, households that did qualify were often unaware that the program existed or how to access it.

While the program hasn’t been without its challenges, it remains one of the few that operates as a free market program, allowing consumers to choose their internet provider instead of the federal government. If the federal government is going to continue providing this type of support to low-income households, this is a far better approach than others that pick winners and losers.

The sunset of the ACP is an invitation for Congress and the FCC to evaluate the state of broadband programs more broadly. Have the twenty five programs made real change? Which initiatives can be consolidated or streamlined? How can we empower consumers? Most importantly, how can we ensure that taxpayer dollars are being used in an orderly and effective manner so that the digital divide can be closed and Americans can experience all the benefits of high speed internet?