Persistent attacks by the federal government on Internet affordability protections and social safety nets are directly resulting in a drop in overall broadband adoption, with large numbers of low-income Americans unable to afford modern connectivity — and the vast benefits it provides.

That was the message sent by local and national broadband researchers attending an informational meeting last month in Indiana, Pennsylvania before the Pennsylvania House Communications & Technology Committee.

Researchers noted that sustained efforts by the federal government across numerous fronts — from attacks on the social safety net to the Republican destruction of the FCC Affordable Connectivity Program (which provided $30 broadband discounts to more than 23 million households) are directly driving vulnerable populations away from Internet adoption.

Attendees noted that the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) alone — which dramatically lowered taxes for U.S. corporations and the wealthy — is projected to reduce broadband connections by approximately 233,000 in Pennsylvania's lowest income quintile.

One attendee, Indiana County Commissioner Sherene Hess, pointed to 2024 data from public-benefit corporation Ready.net showing that Indiana County is among the least-connected counties in Pennsylvania, with 22 percent of county locations without broadband access.

According to notoriously unreliable FCC data (coverage and speed gaps are usually worse than the federal government claims), of the 103,986 “serviceable locations” in Indiana County, 23,049 locations are unserved and 3,927 locations are underserved — meaning they fail to meet FCC minimum broadband speed standards.

Hess combined data from the U.S. census and a 2022 United Way ALICE (Asset Limited Income Constrained, Employed) report to conclude that 46 percent of Indiana County was facing financial hardship, suggesting that $80 to $200 monthly Internet bills “create a choice between Internet service and other basic needs.”

Officials for the volunteer-run nonprofit NYC Mesh have been awarded a new $898,000 grant from New York State’s ConnectALL initiative that should help the project expand affordable wireless Internet access to the Big Apple’s most vulnerable populations.

The grant is one of $8.3 million in new grants recently awarded by New York State providing much-needed financial assistance to community or municipally run broadband connectivity initiatives through the Connectivity Innovation – Business Model Awards, which support organizations using “novel financing strategies” to serve low-income and rural communities.

“It's mostly fixed wireless, though we'll rent dark fiber in a couple places if necessary,” NYC Mesh’s Ash Wolfson tells ILSR, adding that the expanded wireless links will leverage equipment from Ubiquiti (Airfiber and Wave), with hardware from Mikrotik (RB5009 and CCR2116) or Netpower (16P and CRS317) for routing and switching.

According to NYC Mesh officials, NYC Housing Preservation & Development will help the volunteer-run nonprofit in identifying priority neighborhoods underserved by traditional commercial ISPs, ultimately connecting at least 500 additional low income households to its affordable, community-run network.

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“Our agency is excited to partner with NYC Mesh on expanding our Neighborhood Internet program model to Central Brooklyn, where nearly 25 percent of households lack Internet access,” Dave Seliger, NYC Housing Preservation & Development Chief Digital Equity Officer says of the expansion.

Oregon’s Coos-Curry Electric Cooperative (CCEC) and its subsidiary Beacon Broadband (BBI) say they have completed the biggest fiber expansion project in the cooperative’s history, dramatically expanding affordable Internet access to thousands of previously unserved rural households in the Southern part of The Beaver State.

Cooperative officials say the six-year, $60 million project was the largest infrastructure investment in the cooperative's 88-year history. 7,000 of the co-op’s 14,000 electrical customers are now subscribed to broadband service after the deployment of 14,000 miles of fiber optic lines that have also streamlined maintenance and monitoring of the electrical grid.

Originally, a CCEC engineering feasibility study estimated the build would cost $45 million, though CCEC’s board later revised the capital budget to $60 million to reflect steeper construction costs due to the rugged, rural coastal terrain.

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To fund the project, the CCEC Board authorized BBI to secure up to $60 million in private borrowing through CoBank.

It was supplemented by several state and federal grants, including a 2020 $14.1 million Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) grant, a $19 million grant from the Oregon Broadband Deployment Program (BDP) to expand high-speed Internet access to over 1,200 addresses in rural Curry and Coos counties, and a $7 million USDA Rural Development grant.

HomeWorks Tri-County Electric Cooperative says it has acquired the cable and fiber broadband systems of private ISP Vogtmann Engineering (VEI) in order to expand its broadband footprint across central Michigan. The migration will result in faster, cheaper Internet access for rural Michigan subscribers long stuck on the wrong side of the digital divide.

HomeWorks was founded in 1937 by farmers in Eaton, Ingham and Jackson counties to bring electricity to rural areas left behind by the big-city utilities. It’s one of the country’s 250 electrical cooperatives (out of 900) that have leveraged a century of rural electrification experience to pivot into bringing affordable Internet access to long-neglected Americans.

In 2018, the cooperative launched HomeWorks Connect, which provides Michigan locals with three tiers of fiber service: a symmetrical 250 megabit per second (Mbps) tier for $65 a month; a symmetrical 500 Mbps option for $90 a month; and a symmetrical 1 gigabit per second (Gbps) tier for $100 a month. The tiers feature no usage caps, hidden fees, or long-term contracts.

According to HomeWorks, the acquisition of VEI’s network assets includes 15 miles of cable in the neighboring villages of Nashville and Vermontville, passing just over 1,000 homes and businesses.

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Cooperative leadership says they’re just beginning the process to upgrade VEI’s coaxial cable to fiber connectivity, and integrate the existing system into its HomeWorks Connect network, which currently serves more than 14,000 homes and businesses across rural mid-Michigan.

For years, Cleveland was labeled as one of the worst-connected cities in the nation despite the presence of AT&T and Charter Spectrum. But all of that is changing, thanks to an innovative nonprofit community network provider.

Even without getting a cent from the federal government’s flagship $42.5 billion dollar BEAD program, Cleveland is no longer just home to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. It’s now also the home of skyrocketing connectivity rates as DigitalC transforms the city’s digital landscape.

The data-backed progress was enough to convince the Cleveland City Council to recently sign off on a $4.35 million “performance payment” — part of an overall $20 million earmark from the city's coffers — to DigitalC after the nonprofit Internet provider blew past its 2025 goals for getting residents online and teaching them digital skills, a milestone city leaders are pointing to as proof that “The Cleveland Model” for closing the digital divide actually works.

Under its performance-based contract with the city, DigitalC was on the hook to add 4,700 new household Internet subscriptions and deliver digital skills training to 10,000 residents in 2025 or miss out on the multi-million dollar infusion of city cash.

California community leaders, activists, and a coalition of partners gathered earlier this month to celebrate the launch of a new broadband infrastructure project at Sequoia Courts and Sequoia Courts Terrace in Fresno, bringing free high-speed Internet access to more than 350 residents.

The plan to bring broadband access to residents at no cost was made possible through a partnership with Fresno Housing, Fresno Coalition for Digital Inclusion (FCDI), United Way Fresno & Madera Counties, and Central Valley Community Foundation (CVCF). The Fresno Housing Authority will own and maintain the finished network.

The expansion, which leverages a hybrid fiber-wireless approach, was directly funded by California’s ambitious Broadband For All initiative, a $6 billion effort aimed at dramatically boosting broadband competition and access across the Golden State. Much of that effort was funded, in part, by the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).

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The Fresno grant was for $471,000, with $1,000 or less per unit cost to build, according to details on the project included in a California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) filing, which notes that the enterprise-grade wireless mesh network used in the project was more costly, but provided “flexibility and scalability for future expansion.”

Trump Federal Communication Commission Chairman Brendan Carr has announced vague potential changes to the FCC’s E-Rate program that could harm program funding, effectiveness, and the overarching goal of bringing affordable Internet access to long-neglected schools and rural communities trapped on the wrong side of the digital divide.

The reforms come as Carr also looks to make changes to the FCC’s broadband mapping efforts, something consumer groups say could harm the government’s ability to measure which communities need improved, affordable access, or suffer from a pronounced lack of broadband competition.

In an announcement to the FCC website, Carr stated the 30-year-old bipartisan E-Rate program, which costs $3 billion annually, was in dire need of reforms. The program is primarily funded by a small surcharge affixed to phone lines. With the steady erosion of copper-based phone lines, debates have arisen about how to best sustain the program.

But instead of focusing on issues like subsidy fraud by large telecoms, Carr’s announcement oddly focuses heavily on concerns about student “screen time” and what content students are allowed to view. It’s a problematic foray for an FCC boss recently under fire for unconstitutional censorship efforts targeting comedians and journalists.

Today, the American Prospect published an analysis – “A California Democrat Is Trying to Gut the State’s Broadband Watchdog” – authored by our own Sean Gonsalves that examines a recently filed bill in California which aims to “strip telecommunications oversight authority away from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) and shift it to a more easily lobbied state legislature and a hypothetical state broadband office that doesn’t yet exist.”

The piece details how the CPUC has become a national model for broadband consumer protection, extracting landmark affordability commitments from the proposed Charter-Cox merger, launching a state-funded broadband subsidy program, and administering the only public loan fund in the nation dedicated exclusively to community-owned Internet networks.

Here's a few excerpts:

“Given what the CPUC has done over the past several years to ensure that every family in California can afford internet access, Boerner’s characterization of her poison pill is enough to make Orwell blush and MAGA operatives smile.”

“To understand what’s really at stake in Boerner’s proposal, it helps to understand what the CPUC has built, mostly behind the scenes, and what would be lost.”

“On telecom issues, the CPUC is not just a passive regulator. In the words of Ernesto Falcon, branch manager of the Communications and Broadband Policy division of the agency’s Public Advocates Office, the CPUC is something closer to ‘a public defender in the regulatory space.’”

“The office employs 22 public servants—attorneys, researchers, and policy specialists—whose sole job is to advocate for California consumers in a regulatory arena dominated by monopoly telecom companies with virtually unlimited resources to influence lawmakers and set the agenda.”