How the FCC is Trying to Make it Harder to Get Low-Cost Internet

Editor’s Note: This story is from CableTV.com.

Recently, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to consider adding additional eligibility restrictions to its Internet Lifeline subsidy program.

The Lifeline program, which provides $9.25 a month internet and phone credit to eligible low-income households, may see some of the following changes:

• Legally restricts Lifeline to US citizens.
• It requires a five-year waiting period for eligible noncitizens or those going through the immigration process.
• It requires applicants to enter their full Social Security number rather than their last four digits.
• Changing the eligibility requirements to a “1-per-address” rule would affect multi-family households.

The FCC says these changes are designed to eliminate wasteful funding from the Lifeline program. In its news release, the FCC cited a January internal investigation that found the system lost $10.5 million from 2020 to 2025 due to payments made to people who died or were withdrawn twice.

That said, this total amount is less than 1% of Lifeline’s annual budget, which is allocated to $2.9 billion in 2026 alone. Similarly, administrative improvements were only part of the FCC’s proposed Lifeline reforms, which focused heavily on citizenship verification.

While the proposed revisions still have a long way to go before they become policy, industry analysts argue that the FCC’s changes will create more roadblocks for low-income families who need internet.

How the proposed Lifeline changes affect the low-income Internet

Lifeline is already an underutilized program for several reasons. The FCC in partnership with the Universal Service Administrative Company estimates that only 21% of qualified applicants will be enrolled in Lifeline by 2025.

Similarly, Lifeline’s basic $9.25 monthly bill doesn’t come close to covering standard internet plans from many providers, which start at around $50 a month. Instead, most of Lifeline’s customers have to settle for low-income Internet plans with speeds below 100 Mbps that make gaming or high-definition streaming difficult.

Many industry groups criticized the FCC’s vote as a move to make it harder for legal immigrants and low-income families to get online.

“Everyone deserves affordable phone and Internet service,” Jenna Leventoff, Senior Policy Advisor for the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement. “We are concerned that the FCC’s proposals to limit Lifeline’s eligibility, expand data collection about the program’s users, and end phone-only service will increase the digital divide. We urge the FCC to reconsider these dangerous proposals so that everyone can stay connected.”

All of these factors suggest that the main impact of the FCC’s proposed changes will be to make it more difficult for low-income families to sign up for Lifeline and gain access to the Internet. We will point out that Lifeline already requires applicants to enroll in an eligible federal assistance program or show that their income is below the federal poverty line.

In an era where the digital divide is more prominent than ever, these proposed policy changes seem to benefit ISPs more than households.