ITIF: NTIA Must Focus on Affordability Along With Deployment
Affordability is a bigger problem than availability when it comes to closing the digital divide in home broadband, and NTIA stopping its BEAD efforts at deployment "means leaving most of the digital divide in place," the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation's Joe Kane wrote Thursday. NTIA should make clear that states can use BEAD to support home broadband affordability but not mobile service, said Kane, the organization's director of broadband and spectrum policy. He noted that limiting affordability support to home broadband wouldn't compromise BEAD's technology neutrality. Using BEAD money on home broadband, but not mobile, would take care of concerns that consumers will apply benefits to mobile service they already have, making affordability support ineffective at addressing home broadband.
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Kane also said non-deployment funds used for affordability could avoid the problems that plagued the affordable connectivity program, such as subsidizing too many households, through narrower eligibility criteria. The estimated $20 billion in BEAD funding that could be available for non-deployment efforts could last up to six years, he said. "While not infinite, this time period would be a significant step toward BEAD’s goal of bridging the digital divide once and for all." He added that the affordability hurdles to broadband adoption could be notably lower in six years.