Posts by François Bar

With the expiration of the ACP (Affordable Connectivity Program) benefit in May 2024, Lifeline remains the only alternative federal program that supports digital connectivity for low-income families. Yet for a variety of reasons, Lifeline enrollment has been declining since its peak in the early 2010s. One reason is the complex web of procedures to demonstrate…

Did ACP have a measurable impact on broadband access? Did the program help connect low-income families that otherwise would not have been connected? As the ACP program winds down, these questions become ever more important for policymakers and policy advocates. In this study, we offer preliminary evidence that ACP in fact helped increase broadband adoption…

Blog Post #2: Analyzing the Impact of Potential Changes to Program-Based Eligibility  In the first post of this series on the future of the ACP program, we analyzed potential changes to the income threshold used to determine ACP eligibility. In this second post, we turn our attention to potential changes to the eligibility criteria based…

Discussions about funding for social programs are too often framed along predictable partisan lines. However, the reality on the ground is frequently more complex, and the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) is no exception. A simple look at the data reveals that the program supports connectivity for families in both red and blue communities, and that…

The Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) is the most ambitious federal initiative put into place to bridge the broadband connectivity gap for low-income Americans. The ACP launched in January 2022, serving almost 10 million households that were transitioned from the Emergency Broadband Benefit program (EBB). By the end of 2022 it had enrolled another 5.4 million…