At Comcast, we remain committed to doing our part to help connect low-income households including:

• Partial Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) Credit – To help ease the transition, all ACP customers will receive a federally funded ACP credit of $14 on their Xfinity bills ($35 on Tribal lands) for the month of May as the government program winds down.
• Internet Essentials – We continue to offer Internet Essentials for $9.95/month. All current ACP customers are eligible to switch to Internet Essentials tiers during this transition.
• Internet Essentials+ – For customers looking for even faster speeds, Internet Essentials Plus offers double the speed – up to 100 Mbps – for $29.95/month.
• Xfinity Mobile Savings – For those looking to save money on their monthly bills, we’re also offering discounts to customers who bundle their Internet service with Xfinity Mobile. New Internet Essentials Plus customers can take advantage of a free line of Xfinity Mobile for one year. Additionally, current customers enrolled in ACP with Comcast who add Xfinity Mobile can get an additional free unlimited line for one year, potentially saving them hundreds of dollars per year.
• NOW WiFi Pass – For individuals and families on the go, Comcast has introduced NOW WiFi Pass, which connects them to our 23 million+ Xfinity WiFi hotspots nationwide. Now through June 30, customers can get online for $10/month with no additional equipment required, no long-term commitments, or any cancellation fees.
• Lift Zones – Individuals, whether they’re our customers or not, can access one of our more than 1,250 WiFi-connected Lift Zones across the country. Working with our extensive network of nonprofit partners, Lift Zones provide free Internet access in neighborhood locations like nonprofits, community centers, gyms, and parks and recreation facilities. Additionally, many locations have Digital Navigators – trusted and trained individuals who help them get online and learn digital skills.
• Internet Essentials Partnership Program – Our Internet Essentials Partnerships Program (IEPP) provides the opportunity for school districts and other organizations to fund and connect large numbers of students and families to broadband access at home. Since 2020, IEPP has collaborated with hundreds of entities across the country to help connect K-12 students.
• Partnerships and Project UP – We also continue to work with our network of thousands of nonprofit partners nationwide who are on the front lines of closing the digital divide. We’re investing in organizations that train thousands of trusted Digital Navigators who connect people to the Internet; and partners who advance economic mobility and open doors for the next generation of innovators, entrepreneurs, storytellers, and creators. This is all backed by Project UP, our $1B commitment to advance digital equity and help build a future of unlimited possibilities.

In the course of the Federal Communications Commission's Office of Economics and Analytics’ (OEA) review of George Ford's Regulation and Investment in the U.S. Telecommunications Industry, staff determined that the underlying data relied upon by the author of this study has been revised by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) since the author’s analysis and the corrected data changes the results. Staff submitted a link to the original BEA data used by Dr. Ford, a link to the revised BEA data, and a comparison Dr. Ford’s two baseline model regressions using the different data sets. 

The US Department of Commerce and Samsung Electronics have signed a non-binding preliminary memorandum of terms (PMT) to provide up to $6.4 billion in direct funding under the CHIPS and Science Act to strengthen the resilience of the U.S. semiconductor supply chain, advance U.S. technology leadership, and fuel U.S. global competitiveness. Samsung—the only leading-edge semiconductor company that is a leader in both advanced memory and advanced logic technologies—is expected to invest more than $40 billion dollars in the region in the coming years, and the proposed investment would support the creation of over 20,000 jobs. The proposed investment would turn Samsung’s existing presence in Texas into a comprehensive ecosystem for the development and production of leading-edge chips in the United States, including two new leading-edge logic fabs, an R&D fab, and an advanced packaging facility in Taylor, as well as an expansion to their existing Austin facility. It also demonstrates Samsung’s ongoing commitment to the United States, where it has been manufacturing chips since 1996. By continuing to develop the technologies of the future in the United States, Samsung is taking steps that would work towards strengthening U.S. economic and national security and increasing the resilience of both the U.S. and global semiconductor supply chains. Because of investments like Samsung’s, the United States is projected to be on track to produce roughly 20% of the world’s leading-edge logic chips by 2030.

With the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) on the line, internet service providers (ISPs) want to ensure their low-income subscribers don’t lose internet access—and that nobody falls through the cracks. Identity verification company SheerID has launched a tool allowing telcos to verify that households are eligible for government assistance programs. With the ACP slated to run out of funding at the end of April, SheerID said its verification tool is a way for carriers to continue reduced rate pricing and promotions to families who need extra financial support. SheerID is in talks with a number of its customers “in terms of transitioning off the ACP program into using our product” for supporting families on government assistance. But as the product just came out, there aren’t any partnerships to announce so far. All told, determining eligibility for low-cost internet plans is going to get a lot less organized if ACP goes away. While the Federal Communications Commission has allowed some ISPs to verify ACP eligibility themselves, consumers applying for ACP have typically gone through the National Verifier, a centralized application system managed by the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC).