White House Lines Up 20 ISPs to Offer Free 100Mbps Broadband to Qualifying Households
Almost 40% of American households will be in line to have their connectivity costs drop to zero under an initiative featuring 20 internet providers that President Biden and Vice President Harris announced at a White House event streamed from the Rose Garden Monday.
“When we connect people with high-speed internet, we connect them with opportunity,” Harris said before an invited audience.
“This is a case where big business stepped up,” Biden said minutes later.
The 20 ISPs that signed on to this program—including the top five of Comcast, Charter, AT&T, Verizon, and Cox, as well as such smaller operators as Breezeline and Starry—will offer $30 plans with download speeds of 100Mbps or more, no extra fees, and no data caps to households eligible for the Affordable Connectivity Program.
After the $30/month stipend ($75 for Americans living on tribal lands), which is available through that component of last year’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, qualifying families will then pay zero for their broadband.
The program’s rules, which replaced the $50/month Emergency Broadband Benefit enacted as a temporary pandemic relief measure, casts a wide net. The White House’s announcement estimates that 48 million households, close to 40% of the total, will qualify by having either a household income at or below 200% of the federal poverty level or one household member on a long list of federal benefit programs.
Biden said the 20 providers offering these $30 plans cover 80% of the U.S. population and commended them for improving their services to meet that standard. Charter’s Spectrum cable service, for example, doubled its minimum upload speed while Verizon knocked $10 off the starting rate for its Fios fiber-optic broadband.
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