If Congress fails to prevent it, one in four Ohio households will start paying an extra $30 a month for Internet service in May or June.
That’s when Affordable Connectivity Program credits are expected to disappear from monthly home and mobile broadband bills, thanks to Congress’s failure (so far!) to replenish the program’s dwindling funds.
Internet providers have just begun sending out FCC-required notifications of the ACP’s imminent demise to their ACP subscribers.
The resulting Internet cost increase for all 1.1 million Ohio ACP households over the next year could exceed $400 million.
Here’s a breakout of those extra costs by county. (Click on the link, then on the image to make it readable.)
Of course the total could be less. Tens of thousands of those households might decide they just can’t afford to pay another $360 a year and drop off… or fall behind, get into arrears and get shut off.
Let’s say, for example, that 20% of Ohio’s current ACP households are voluntarily or involuntarily disconnected within a few months, thanks to the higher bills. That would reduce the Ohio financial impact of the ACP’s demise by around $7 million a month, bringing it closer to $330 million a year… still a very big hit on Ohio consumers.
But 229,000 fewer households with Internet connections — nearly 5% of all Ohio households — would also be a huge setback for digital access in the state. So that’s not exactly a better scenario.
It’s possible that some Internet providers will try to soften the blow, and hold on to ACP subscribers, by adding modest rate concessions of their own. But Spectrum and AT&T, Ohio’s two biggest home broadband providers accounting for more than half the state’s ACP subscriptions, already offer reduced-cost options to many participants in the program. Will they do more, without the benefit of a guaranteed Federal check of $30 per household per month? Don’t bet on it.
ACP Extension in Congress
So what can Congress do to head off this looming $360 annual rate hike for millions of their constituents?
Two weeks ago a bipartisan group of eight U.S. Representatives and four Senators introduced the Affordable Connectivity Program Extension Act (H.R.6929 and S.3565). For a piece of important Federal legislation, the ACP Extension Act is extremely short and simple. Here’s all of the bill’s substantive language: “(B) FISCAL YEAR 2024.—There is appropriated to the Affordable Connectivity Fund, out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, $7,000,000,000 for fiscal year 2024, to remain available until expended.”
$7 billion is an amount carefully calculated to keep the ACP in business from the beginning of May, when its current funds will run out, through the end of 2024. The FCC, and the ACP’s supporters inside and outside of Congress, hope that will be enough time to develop a long-term framework for funding the program as part of a revamped Universal Service Fund.
Whether or not that hope turns out to be realistic, extending the ACP’s funding through the end of 2024 will at least get it safely past the Presidential and Congressional elections and the current budget impasse. And that ought to make sense, because ACP extension is, on the surface, a remarkably bipartisan priority.
Sponsorship of the ACP Extension Act in both houses is evenly split: Six Democrats, six Republicans. (One of the Rs, to his credit, is Ohio Senator JD Vance.) The bill is endorsed by progressive consumer groups alongside the entire telecom and cable industries, and by the United Steelworkers alongside the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. A recent national poll showed strong majority support for the ACP from every imaginable political subgroup, including 62% of Republicans, 78% of Independents, and 96% of Democrats. (Seriously, click through and take a look at all the categories — it’s stunning!) The program has achieved solid penetration in rural, small-town and urban areas alike. As we’ve reported before, over 60% of ACP subscribers in Ohio are represented by Republicans in Congress.
So you’d think passing the ACP Extension Act would be a slam-dunk, even in the strange environment of the 118th Congress. But this doesn’t seem to be the case. Having been introduced with some fanfare in both the House and the Senate on January 10, the bill was referred to their respective Appropriations Committees. After that: Silence.
Among other signs of possible difficulty, two weeks have passed with no additional co-sponsors announced in either chamber. CYC has heard that willing Democratic co-sponsors are being asked to wait until they can be matched with equal numbers of new Republicans. Apparently recruitment on that side of the aisle is going slowly.
One Northeast Ohio Congressman with a critical role in this process is 14th District Representative Dave Joyce, the state’s only member of the Republican majority on the House Appropriations Committee. Joyce’s district, including Trumbull, Portage, Geauga, Lake and Ashtabula Counties, has about 70,000 ACP subscribers (22% of the district’s households). They’ll all be confronting that $360-per-year rate increase in May, unless he and his colleagues take action now to get the ACP Extension Act out of committee and onto the House floor for a vote. If you live in Joyce’s district you might want to reach out to him and ask about his plans to pass the Act and prevent that rate increase for his constituents.
Tomorrow (January 25) a number of organizations including the National Digital Inclusion Alliance will launch a media and outreach effort called Don’t Disconnect US Day, aimed at increasing the ACP Extension Act’s sponsorship and moving it toward a vote. This is just one of many ongoing efforts by various ACP supporters, including Connect Your Community.
You can click on the image below to go to the DDUSD webpage and make use of its easy Congressional contact tools to add your voice.
