The White House is pressing Congress to extend a subsidy program that helps one in six US families afford internet and represents a key element of President Joe Biden’s promise to deliver reliable broadband service to every American household.
“For President Biden, internet is like water,” said Tom Perez, senior adviser and assistant to the president, on a call Monday with reporters. “It’s an essential public necessity that should be affordable and accessible to everyone.”
The Affordable Connectivity Program offers qualifying families discounts on their internet bills — $30 a month for most families and up to $75 a month for families on tribal lands. The one-time infusion of $14.2 billion for the program through the bipartisan infrastructure law is projected to run out of money at the end of April.
“Just as we wouldn’t turn off the water pipes in a moment like this, we should never turn off the high-speed internet that is the pipeline to opportunity and access to health care for so many people across this country,” Perez said.
The program has a wide swath of support from public interest groups, local- and state-level broadband officials, and big and small telecommunications providers.
“We were very aggressive in trying to assist our members with access to the program,” said Gary Johnson, CEO of Paul Bunyan Communications, a Minnesota-based internet provider. “Frankly, it was they have internet or not. It’s almost not a subsidy — it is enabling them to have internet at all.”
Paul Bunyan Communications, a member-owned broadband cooperative that serves households in north central Minnesota, is one of 1,700 participating internet service providers that began sending out notices last month indicating the program could expire without action from Congress.
“It seems to be a bipartisan issue — internet access and the importance of it,” Johnson said.
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