What Next TBD: The Failing Lifeline for Low-Income Americans

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3.9 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 5 March 2021

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The federal Lifeline program was intended to bridge the gap between Americans who could comfortably pay for phone and internet service, and those who couldn’t. But in the midst of the pandemic, Lifeline is falling woefully short. How did a program meant to help connect low-income Americans with phone and internet service ended up making them second-class digital citizens at the worst possible moment? Guest: Tony Romm, senior tech policy reporter at the Washington Post, author of “How the Federal Lifeline Program Failed Amid the Coronavirus Pandemic” Host Lizzie O’Leary Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode is brought to you by EA Sports with PlayStation 5.
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0:18.1	Play before November 1st to become a founder and get exclusive benefits in EA Sports FC 24 and beyond.
0:24.8	Visit easports.com slash FC to learn more.
0:28.4	Rated Peggy Free.
0:30.0	Before I got on the line with Tony Rom from The Washington Post, I looked up my cell phone bill.
0:39.2	It went to the AT&T website, downloaded the PDF, and went through it, line by line.
0:45.5	And underneath the monthly charge and the various taxes, there was this one line with a small fee for $1.85.
0:52.9	That is an amount of money that you are paying that helps subsidize this very big historic program
0:59.4	that the U.S. has had in place for many years now to help people who can't get online in a Ford phone service
1:05.2	in the way that you and I and perhaps some of your listeners can.
1:08.2	That program, the Universal Service Fund, pays for a bunch of things, including moral healthcare technology and internet access for some schools.
1:16.4	And a special program called Lifeline.
1:19.0	Lifeline is a digital safety net that is supposed to help low-income Americans get phone and internet service.
1:25.8	What Lifeline does essentially is it gives a monthly stipend to people.
1:29.2	It's $9.25 or so.
1:31.9	And that stipend will subsidize their phone connectivity.
1:36.6	There's just one problem.
1:38.8	And it's that Lifeline plans kind of suck.
	...

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