Brookings

The Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) was established to address one of the contributing factors to the US digital divide—monthly affordability of services. The initial $14 billion that once sounded like a generous investment toward these concerns is now expected to run out. After a year of predictions that high enrollments would lead to this moment, Congress has finally started to take notice.

November 15, 2023, marks the two-year anniversary of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) becoming law. After decades spent waiting for Congress to pass such a historic infrastructure bill, this is certainly a celebratory moment. So, at the two-year mark, where do we stand? Based on our analysis of published White House data, IIJA implementation is just now hitting its stride. Formula and direct federal spending continue to move at a steady pace, already pumping $229 billion into state coffers and direct investment projects.

On October 19, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted 3-2 to issue a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to reinstate the agency’s 2015 decision that brought internet service providers (ISPs) under the agency’s jurisdiction as Telecommunications Carriers. This action is necessary because the Trump FCC repealed the previous rule in 2018 at the request of the ISPs.

The variation in the affordability of internet access is the focus of the latest Internet Poverty Index (IPI) 2023, which projects the distribution of individuals who are priced out of a basic package of mobile internet and are thus living in internet poverty. Based on the latest IPI data, World Data Lab predicts that 1.05 billion people are currently living in internet poverty. Since 2015, the internet-poor population has decreased by 685 million or around 40 percent. The reduction in internet poverty has been driven by a universal

In the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, Congress tasked the Federal Communications Commission to “take steps to ensure that all people of the United States benefit from equal access to broadband internet access within the service area of a provider of such service.” In the statute, the term “equal access” refers to “equal opportunity to subscribe to an offered service that provides comparable speeds, capacities, latency, and other quality of service metrics in a given area, for comparable terms and conditions.” In principle, Congress’s directive is straightforward and reasonable cons