The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) last week issued an order that denied a request by four Lifeline providers to extend COVID-era waiver rules one additional day. If the request had been granted, the FCC said, these providers would have gotten an extra month of federal subsidies despite continued non-use of the service.
The Lifeline program provides communications connectivity to low-income customers. The voice and broadband services only are supported if the services are recently used. On March 30, 2020, the FCC temporarily waived the Lifeline service usage requirement to ensure that no subscriber involuntarily lost connectivity during the pandemic. The Commission ended the waiver on April 30, 2021.
Four providers — Assist Wireless, Boomerang Wireless, Easy Wireless, and i-wireless — sought reimbursement for the waiver through March 1, 2021, which would have extended subsidies for an extra month. Last week’s decision affirmed that date and found petitioners are not entitled to the extra month of support.
“The American public pays for the federal subsidies that support the agency’s Lifeline program. Therefore, the FCC has a responsibility to be good stewards of those funds,” FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in a press release about the Lifeline decision.
“One way we police waste, fraud, and abuse is through enforcement of the FCC’s non-usage rule. This rule prohibits Lifeline providers from obtaining federal subsidies for services that subscribers are not using. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the FCC provided a limited waiver of the non-usage rule. But the petitioners here have tried to extend that waiver — and thus obtain millions of dollars in federal subsidies — after the relevant time period ended.”
A similar program for low-income Americans, the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), was a COVID-era program that ended in May 2024 after connecting more than 23 million households to the internet. A study by The Brattle Group found that reinstating the program would result in healthcare savings alone that would quadruple the $7.3 billion annual cost of the program.
