Despite a memo issued by the NTIA last summer that sought to discourage states from passing affordable broadband legislation similar to New York State’s Affordable Broadband Act, two dozen state lawmakers in Maryland have signed on to the Broadband Opportunity and Fairness Act, state legislation that seeks to address the single biggest barrier to Internet access anywhere: affordability.
HB-382, if passed, would require Internet Service Providers (ISPs) operating in Maryland to offer low-cost Internet service plans to eligible low-income households.
Introduced by Delegate Kris Fair (D-3A, Frederick Co.), the bill now has 25 co-sponsors and is slated for a Feb. 12 legislative hearing before the House Economic Matters Committee. Companion legislation has yet to be filed in the Senate, though Delegate Fair’s office says they are in discussions with state Senators about advancing a bill through that chamber as well.
Stepping Up and 'Doing Something'
Delegate Fair’s Chief-of-Staff Camila Reynolds-Dominguez tells ILSR that with Congress' inaction in re-authorizing the now-expired Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), which provided a $30/month discount to help 23 million income-eligible households pay for Internet service – and despite an NTIA FAQ that sought to throw cold-water on state-level affordable broadband legislation – it is important for states to step up; both as a matter of upholding state’s rights to enact consumer protections, and as a more practical matter of addressing affordability more broadly.
“Delagate Fair recognizes (high-speed Internet connectivity as) similar to things like water and power. It’s a utility – because it’s essential for everyday life,” Reynolds-Dominguez tells ILSR.
“It’s also part of a larger conversation on affordability. If we can do our part to lower the cost of essential services like Internet (access), it won’t fix the whole problem, but it will help. It's the states' responsibility to step up and try to do something.”
Aiming to Thread a BEAD-Sized Needle
While the proposed legislation in Maryland is similar to New York’s Affordable Broadband Act, one key difference is that the Maryland bill allows the provider to set the low-cost plan's price. New York law mandates ISPs of a certain size offer a $20/month plan. But, Reynolds-Dominguez said, that given NTIA’s memo – which threatened to withhold states’ federal BEAD (Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment) funds should a state adopt “price control” law – the Maryland bill seeks to avoid that.
“When we read the (NTIA) memo, we said ‘ok, we can’t set actual prices.’ So we took the actual federal BEAD statute and (are looking to) codify that into the bill (with a few additions).”
For example, unlike the New York law, the proposed Maryland bill establishes that the low-cost plan would have minimum broadband speeds of 100/20 Mbps for a household of two or less. But for households with three or more, the minimum speeds would be set at 200/20 Mbps to account for the extra bandwidth needed for larger households. The New York law requires low-cost service plans in the Empire State to be 25/3 Mbps, a minimum that was set before the FCC updated its antiquated minimum broadband speeds to 100/20 in March 2024.
The bill also seeks to create an advisory board to define what a "low-cost broadband service option" should be as required by federal law (47 USC 1702). The advisory board would be made up of state broadband officials, broadband providers, and stakeholder groups.
“The bill proposes to codify the BEAD statute, mandating the ISPs to talk with state broadband officials on what affordability means,” Reynolds-Dominguez explained. “It also would give the state AG enforcement powers to enforce that definition of affordability.”
That way, Reynolds-Dominguez said, it would be the ISPs using BEAD dollars asking for NTIA approval of their agreed-upon low-cost price, rather than the state asking for permission.
Other elements of the proposed legislation include:
- Defines low income as 350 percent of the federal poverty level or enrollment in benefit programs, including school lunch, SNAP, and Medicaid.
- Includes wireline, fixed wireless, mobile, and satellite providers in which the Office of Statewide Broadband may exempt a provider if it provides broadband service to fewer than 20,000 households (there are three known providers in the state with fewer than 20,000 subscribers) or if it creates an unreasonable or unsustainable financial impact on the provider.
- Any provider who offers low-cost broadband service that involves fiber-optic or conduit underground or along a roadway, the provider must include conduit access points at regular and short intervals. And if the provider can no longer offer a low-cost broadband service, it must sell network capacity at reasonable, wholesale rates on a nondiscriminatory basis to other providers.
- Low-cost plans must be prominently featured on provider websites, and data about plans and enrollment must be provided annually to the state.
As it relates to enforcement, Reynolds-Dominguez said, the bill “hangs our consumer protection authority” on Title 14 of the Maryland Commercial Law, under a new subtitle of the state’s consumer protection provisions, enforceable by the Office of the Attorney General, and enable the state to collect data from the ISPs low-cost offering by way of the Office of Statewide Broadband under the Maryland Housing and Development Code.
A Way Forward For Maryland and Other States?
For broadband affordability advocates, the Maryland proposal offers an encouraging sign of forward momentum.
After the NTIA FAQ was issued in August of 2025, in several states where broadband affordability advocates were looking to advance legislation, it left many wondering how to proceed without risking their states’ BEAD funds should they enact a New York-style broadband affordability law.
(There is no indication that New York’s law threatens the Empire State’s $664 million in allocated BEAD funds, as the New York law predated the BEAD program and was upheld as constitutional after a lengthy legal battle that ended in December 2024 when The Supreme Court twice declined to intervene in a federal appellate court ruling that allowed the law to stand).
California was the first state after New York to file affordable broadband legislation. And even though that bill had been watered-down by industry lobbyists, the California legislation was withdrawn in June 2025 by a State Assemblymember after she said NTIA informed her office that it would jeopardize the $1.8 billion California is supposed to be allocated under the federal BEAD program.
Several other states, including Massachusetts and Vermont, have also been considering whether – or if – those states should press forward with broadband affordability legislation in the wake of the NTIA FAQ.
For that reason alone, the legislation filed in Maryland is a welcome development for broadband affordability advocates. If the proposed bill makes its way to the Governor’s desk, the key question may ultimately be whether state lawmakers can prevent the advisory committee – too often dominated by Big Telecom lobbyists – from controlling the definition of what price point qualifies as “affordable” for a low-income plan.
Header image of Maryland State Capitol building courtesy of Jimmy Emerson on Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic
Inline headshot of Maryland Delegate Kris Fair courtesy of the Maryland General Assembly website
Inline image of Driving Forward sign courtesy of Pix4Free.org, CC BY-SA 3.0, Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported
