Another chance to fund the Affordable Care Program just went past when Congress finally signed legislation to approve the budgets for the current fiscal year. There was a lot of lobbying to get an extension to ACP included in one of the two budget bills that were recently enacted.

The FCC already took steps to end the program that had 23 million participants. As of February 7, the program no longer accepted new participants in the plan. The FCC required ISPs to notify ACP recipients that the last funding would be in April. The FCC might issue a partial discount in May if enough funds remain. Without Congressional action, the program will cease to exist when the funds run dry.

In October 2023, the White House asked Congress to approve an additional $6 billion to continue to fund the ACP. In a rare show of bipartisanship these days, a group of senators and representatives introduced the Affordable Connectivity Program Extension Act that would have provided $7 billion to extend ACP from unspent Covid-19 funds. Support for ACP poured in from all corners of the country from governors to local politicians. Just in my own neighborhood, the Land of Sky Regional Council Board of Delegates unanimously approved a resolution in support of ACP.

Most of the support and lobbying effort was aimed at getting ACP renewal included in the new budget bills. When that failed, the future chances to fund ACP are looking slimmer by the day.

The consequences of the end of ACP are still to play out. The BEAD legislation required ISPs requesting BEAD funds to participate in ACP, and State Broadband Offices were counting on BEAD participation as a key part of the directive of the IIJA legislation to have affordable rates. ISPs are being put under pressure to self-fund and continue the BEAD discounts. But without a mandate, very few of them will do so. I’ve heard from a number of ISPs that will extend the discounts for a few months past the end of May to see if Congress renews ACP. But it’s hard to think that many ISPs will continue discounts for long after that.

It was not unexpected that we would end up in this situation. Social programs that don’t have a permanent source of funding routinely expire when the temporary funding runs dry. The expanded child care credit that was part of the IIJA Covid funding also expired. The House passed a renewed expansion of the childcare credit, but it stalled in the Senate and also failed to make it into the newly passed budget bills.

I’ve heard rumors for years that the policymakers in DC never expected the ACP program to be permanent. The expectation of the original architects of the plan was that ISPs would bow to public pressure to fill the void when ACP ran dry. However, the giant ISPs are not likely to self-fund the discounts and smaller ISPs can’t afford to do so.

I’ve seen some recent articles that argue that the FCC could tackle at least some of the BEAD obligation out of the Universal Service Fund. Even if the FCC is willing to consider this, their normal process are slow and cumbersome and it’s hard to think it could happen much before the end of the year. But there doesn’t seem to be any talk of the Commissioners willing to tackle this.

Even if ACP gets renewed later this year, it will be a mess. The process of onboarding customers to ACP is cumbersome, and it seems likely that every customer will need to start with a fresh application. A lot of customers are likely not going to jump through the hoops a second time to get the discount.