As part of the President’s Investing in America agenda, the Biden-Harris Administration has made historic progress towards lowering costs – including internet costs – for American families across the country. The Affordable Connectivity Program, enacted under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law as the largest and most successful internet affordability program in our nation’s history, has helped over 23 million households save $30-75 each per month on their monthly internet bills, bringing millions of families online for the first time and making historic progress towards closing the digital divide.
Today, May 31st, is the final day that households will receive any benefit from the Affordable Connectivity Program on their internet bills. Without Congressional action to extend funding for the program, millions of households are now at risk of losing their internet connections. President Biden is once again calling on Congress to extend funding for the Affordable Connectivity Program, so tens of millions of Americans can continue to access this essential benefit.
In the absence of funding for the Affordable Connectivity Program, President Biden remains committed to doing everything possible to ensure families continue to access affordable high-speed internet. Today, the White House highlights voluntary commitments to customers from over a dozen internet service providers to offer plans at $30 or less to low-income households through 2024, so that families across America can continue accessing low-cost internet. This includes commitments from small, rural carriers that serve a single region and larger providers that cover multiple states.
These internet service providers—many of which have a long history of low-cost internet offers—collectively cover up to 10 million ACP households and are voluntarily offering their current ACP subscribers and other eligible households a high-speed internet plan for $30 per month or less, with no fees and data caps, until the end of 2024:
- Allo Fiber
- Altafiber (and Hawaiian Telcom)
- Astound Broadband
- AT&T
- Comcast
- Cox
- IdeaTek
- Mediacom
- MLGC
- Optimum
- Spectrum (Charter Communications)*
- Starry
- Verizon
- Vermont Telephone Company
* Offer available to new subscribers and eligible existing customers.
President Biden knows that even $30 is too much for some families, which is why he will continue calling on Congress to extend funding for the Affordable Connectivity Program. On October 25, 2023, the Biden-Harris Administration sent Congress a supplemental request for $6 billion to extend funding for the Affordable Connectivity Program. Today, the President is repeating that call once again.
Additionally, through a historic $90 billion in high-speed internet investments, the Biden-Harris Administration will continue working to ensure everyone in America can access affordable, reliable high-speed internet:
- The $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program, funded by the President’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, requires every state and territory to develop a low-cost plan to ensure networks built with BEAD funding are affordable to the communities and people they connect;
- The Middle Mile program, funded with $1 billion from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, is funding the construction of 12,000 miles of regional fiber networks, which lowers the cost of building “last mile” connections directly to homes and businesses;
- The Administration has distributed nearly 30,000 connected devices to students and communities, including more than 3,600 through the Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program, to ensure that Tribal communities have the tools and resources they need to get online;
- And already, projects to connect unserved communities to high-speed internet funded by this Administration’s Investing in America agenda are under construction or complete in well over half of states, meaning that rural families stuck with only expensive connections that don’t meet their needs will soon have another more affordable option.
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