Federal Communications Commission hot seat Ajit Pai is drive to impose new cap on funding for Lifeline , a political platform to assist needy the great unwashed survive in the U.S. afford phone , cellular and cyberspace access .
The Lifeline program imposes modest fees on phone bills to bear for $ 9.25 / calendar month subsidy towards low - income Americans ’ telecoms bills ( the requital aremade to approved service providers , not the individual customer ) . Pai ’s precursor Tom Wheelerexpanded Lifeline , which antecedently only subsidized phones , to allow the payments to practice towards wideband charge in 2016 . AsIBT noted , it ’s the same program which inspired button-down call over thewildly exaggerated issueof “ Obamaphones . ”
accord toArs Technica , Pai now wants to implement a “ ego - enforcing budget cap ” on Lifeline in aproposalfiled last week . Said proposal does not specify what the limit on spending through Lifeline would be , but Pai wrote that “ We destine for the program to mechanically make adjustments in ordination to keep the cap in the outcome the budget is outgo . ”
Ars Technica also noted Pai ’s proposal “ suggest carry off a year - older nationwide favorable reception process that makes it easygoing for telecoms to offer subsidized service of process and cut off subsidy for telecoms that resell web access instead of operating their own net . ”
In other tidings , Pai ’s changes to the program would switch off off subsidy expansion when it hit the cap — Wheeler set Lifeline ’s budgetat $ 2.25 billionindexed to inflation annually in 2016 — and make it more difficult for service provider to take part at all . before this year , Paihalted the expansionof the syllabus to nine broadband providers .
Though a three - twelvemonth audited account by the Government Accountability Officereleased in Junefound major waste and fraud in the program , the program is a crucial accompaniment mechanism for the poorest Americans . AsWired noted , large bit of Americans still discover it grueling to afford either cell phones or broadband , and the FCC is already institute a verification system to help prevent fraud which should be available nationally by 2019 . The FCC has estimatedup to 13 million eligible householdsare not taking advantage of the subsidy in the past .
[ Ars Technica / IBT ]
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