In an interesting move, the General Accounting Office released a paper that suggests that the FCC should expand the use of E-Rate funding to allow wireless connections to student homes. The E-Rate program is one of the major components of the Universal Service Fund. Today the E-Rate program can be used to construct fiber assets to reach schools or to subsidize fast broadband connections to schools that demonstrate the financial need.

Specifically, the GAO “recommended that the FCC assess and report on the potential benefits, costs, and challenges of making wireless access off school grounds eligible for E-rate.” The GAO recommendation went on to discuss the impact of the homework gap that puts students without home broadband at risk for falling behind their peers.

I’m sure that every rural broadband advocate understands this issue and applauds the GAO for making this suggestion. However, this seems extraordinary coming from the GAO and seems outside of their stated scope and function. The GAO is the internal auditor of the US government and is often called the congressional watchdog agency that examines how taxpayer dollars are spent. The GAO routinely provides reports to Congress with ideas on how the government can save money and work more efficiently.

I may have missed it, but I can’t remember the agency ever making policy suggestions of this magnitude to the FCC in the past. This seems like a particularly puzzling recommendation because it’s a suggestion on how to spend existing E-Rate money in a different way rather than suggesting ways for the FCC to save money.

The GAO report does a great job of describing the homework gap. The report discusses challenges that school-age children face in doing homework without a computer. The GAO found that many homes without home broadband rely on cellular connectivity, which is largely inadequate for doing homework. The report points out the shortcoming and challenges on the following chart for the alternatives to home broadband such as libraries, community centers, coffee shops, and outdoor WiFi around schools.

The GAO looked into six pilot projects at schools that tried to alleviate the homework gap using wireless technology to connect to students. The GAO pointed out that in 2016 that two schools asked for FCC waivers in the E-Rate program to provide wireless connectivity to students, but the FCC never reacted to the waiver requests.

The GAO concludes the report by recommending that the FCC take steps to assess and publish the potential benefits, costs, and challenges of making off-premises wireless access eligible for E-rate support. The has already FCC agreed with GAO’s recommendation, so I’m sure there will be an assessment coming in the near-future.