Without expressly saying that the Federal Communications Commission should provide vouchers for low-income individuals to pay for Internet access, FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn said the federal government should “make sure the money is flowing where needed.”
In a panel on Tuesday at the Technology Policy Institute’s annual Aspen Forum in Colorado, Clyburn was asked if she would prefer to give the monthly $9.25 “Lifeline” subsidy to qualifying individuals. Currently, utility providers are responsible for ensuring the eligibility of applicants.
“You’ve expressed interest in moving this to — I don’t think you’ve used the word voucher, but a system that is more focused on individuals … you don’t have the companies certify them. Is that something you’d prefer to see more throughout the system?” Clyburn was asked.
Clyburn responded by referencing the Universal Service Fee that is applied to telephone bills to pay for the Lifeline program. For this quarter, it stands at 17.1 percent of the total expense for telephone service. Clyburn suggested that she was empathetic with concerns that it was too high.
“We keep talking about contributions and the levels that are hovering around 17 — I can’t remember what it is, this particular quarter, and what we can do to address that,” Clyburn began.
“The only way I know to do that is to be more efficient. And to really go back to where we began in terms of re-reading what the purpose of universal service — you know, what the purpose of the funding construct is. And that is to bridge a communications divide.”
More specifically, according to the FCC’s website, Lifeline began with the intention of helping low-income people “connect to jobs, family and emergency services.” The program began in 1985 as a means of helping mainly rural residents pay for landline service. It was expanded in 2005 to apply to mobile service before it became more infamously known as the “Obamaphone” program. The FCC voted in June to allow for the subsidy to be used toward broadband Internet service.
Democrats have been pushing for programs to ensure universal broadband access, saying that access is unequal between the poor and the middle class. “A world of broadband ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ is a world where none of us will have the opportunity to enjoy the full fruits of what broadband has to offer,” FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said in June.
Without going into specific solutions, Wheeler went on to say that enabling providers to determine eligibility is a “situation that invites waste and fraud while burdening those providers who do want to comply.”
Speaking on Tuesday, Clyburn echoed Wheeler’s sentiment and continued with the notion that direct subsidies would make the program less expensive.
“The only way to address the issues as it relates to contributions is to remind ourselves that we need to make sure the money is flowing where needed,” Clyburn said, “because it is not doing that effectively, and I am again a proponent of looking at that and making the adjustments where necessary.”
