Low income consumers hit by FCC move to drop affordable broadband programme
06 Feb 2017
Millions of broadband internet consumers have been hit by the newly installed leadership at the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) move to drop a federal programme that sought to provide more affordable broadband internet to low-income families.
FCC's new chairman Aji Pai said on Friday that the decision mainly stemmed from the fact that the broadband subsidy inclusion to the programme, which was called Lifeline, had been a midnight regulation, passed without support from the majority of FCC commissioners.
When the expansion of the programme was put to vote in March 2016, two commissioners voted against it. Pai was one of the pair while the other was commissioner Michael O'Reilly. FCC has five commissioners.
Lifeline essentially provides qualified low-income families with $9.25 monthly credit, which could initially be used to help pay for landline and mobile phone services. The credit had recently been allowed to be used for paying for home broadband internet service.
"We can recite statistics all we want, but we must never lose sight of the fact that what we're really talking about is people - unemployed workers who miss out on jobs that are only listed online, students who go to fast-food restaurants to use the Wi-Fi hotspots to do homework, veterans who are unable to apply for their hard-earned benefits, seniors who can't look up health information when they get sick," previous FCC chairman Tom Wheeler said.
Meanwhile, regulators have told nine companies that they would not be allowed to participate in a federal programme meant to help them provide affordable internet access to low-income consumers. These companies had been given the green light only weeks earlier.
For Kajeet Inc, one of the companies that had been initially granted permission to provide service through Lifeline, the news came as a blow.
"I'm most concerned about the children we serve," said Kajeet founder Daniel Neal. "We partner with school districts - 41 states and the District of Columbia - to provide educational broadband so that poor kids can do their homework."
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