BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – A federal program keeping people connected to the internet could go dark. Since the pandemic, the Affordable Connectivity Program has given low-income families a discount of up to $30 per month on their internet service, a discount many in our region rely on.
“I wasn’t aware of the ACP Program. I had a friend that told me about it which was a godsend, because It was nice to have the option to be able to choose a provider,” said
Rebecca Courtemanche a stay-at-home mom in White River Junction.
She relies on the internet to for her three kids and says if the program goes away, she might have to make cuts to the budget. “Thirty dollars. It won’t be too hard for us to be able to budget in on something like that. What I will probably end up doing is, you know, cut back on buying the Oreo cookies or the treats for the month instead. Your treat is that you still have internet,” she said.
ACP has helped provide high-speed broadband to low-income people across the country and to an estimated 9% of Vermont households, or about 20,000 Vermonters.
Vermont’s congressional delegation has been pushing to fund the program but efforts have so far come up short.
Communication Union Districts like NEK Broadband have helped connect homes with high-speed fiber. The district’s Christine Hallquist says ACP is essential for rural Vermonters.
“You look at people who are not connected to the internet today. There are more than double the number of low-income people are connected. It comes to financial transactions or health visits –those kinds of things — that people who are not connected have a significant disadvantage,” she said. Hallquist says if Vermont were to invest in a program like this, it would cost about $9.3 million. “Which is challenging because it is financially challenging to address these areas anyway.”
Senator Peter Welch is the lead sponsor of the bipartisan Affordable Connectivity Program Extension Act, which would provide $7 billion to the Affordable Connectivity Program through the end of the year.