Th FCC’s new chairman announced today that the commission will not defend the new system for expanding internet subsidies for low-income Americans. A plan that was put into place to help bridge the growing economic “digital divide” in our country.
The decision announced today by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai would halt implementation of last year's expansion of the Lifeline program. This 32-year-old program gives poor people $9.25 a month toward communications services, and it was changed last year to support broadband in addition to phone service.
Last month Pai wrote an intellectually bankrupt defense of his decision to stop the nine new ISPs that were planning to join the Lifeline program. In it, he forgot to mention that the majority of communications companies participating in the Lifeline program provide telephone subsidized service only, not broadband internet service. This announcement is a huge blow to the children and families who cannot afford access to broadband communication networks.
Pai's latest action would prevent new providers from gaining certification in multiple states at once, forcing them to go through each state's approval process separately. Existing providers that want to expand to multiple states would have to complete the same state-by-state process.
Pai is using the age-old Republican aphorism in his defense here which is “the federal government should not infringe upon states’ rights unless of course, it serves our purposes to use the federal government to overreach on states rights and women’s rights and people of colors’ rights.” You know that old proverb. Forget about the fact that the expansion of Lifeline wasn’t an infringement on states’ rights as much as a way to get low-income people access to information and the modern technologies running our world now. You can read about how the “free market” works in getting big telecoms to fulfill their promises on infrastructure and affordable broadband access here and here.
