The ACP 'Saved My Life': Real People Share the Real Cost of Losing Affordable Internet

"The ACP program really saved my life," said Dorothy Burrell, a 55-year-old from Kansas City. 

Burrell was one of the 23 million Americans enrolled in the Affordable Connectivity Program, a pandemic-era fund that helped low-income households pay for internet access. 

These days, Burrell teaches computer skills at the digital advocacy nonprofit Essential Families, but when day-to-day life went online during the pandemic, she suddenly found herself stranded without an internet connection. 

“Because I have lupus, it was hard for me,” Burrell said. “My pastor had to come and put the food outside for me when I couldn't even video her, to talk to her, to let her know, or keep in touch with my family and loved ones.”

Former ACP enrollees have had to make a number of compromises to keep their internet on since it ended a year ago. A January survey from the National Lifeline Association found that nearly 40% of people enrolled in the program said they had to reduce spending on food to afford their new internet bill. 41% cut back on necessities like clothing, heat and doctor’s visits. Another 18% said their kids had difficulty completing homework assignments. 

But the number that stuck out to me the most was the 64% who said they’re unable to maintain regular contact with family and loved ones. That was something I heard echoed by nearly every ACP user I spoke with for this piece: Life without an internet connection can be incredibly isolating. 

“I live alone, and the computer's like my best friend," said Phyllis Jackson, a retired administrative assistant in Monroeville, Pennsylvania. “I listen to YouTube a lot. I check my emails a lot. I’m constantly on there.”

The ACP provided $30 a month to help low-income households pay for an internet connection, or $75 for people living on Tribal lands. The program accepted households at or below 200% of the federal poverty guidelines, or $60,000 for a family of four. Prices to get online have only gone up since it ended, with 63% of customers reporting higher internet bills than the year before in a recent CNET survey. 

Despite broad bipartisan support from voters -- and from former senator, now Vice President J.D. Vance, who co-sponsored a bill in 2024 to extend the ACP -- the program officially ran out of money one year ago. Starting in June 2024, ACP users were faced with a stark choice: find an extra $30 in their monthly budget or cut the cord on their internet connection entirely. 

“It was just a sad moment,” Burrell said. “I was praying that they’d let us keep it. But it was over.”

In my seven years covering the broadband industry, I’ve heard over and over from experts that the reason most people don’t have an internet connection isn’t because it’s unavailable -- it’s just too expensive. The ACP was the first time the federal government seriously addressed the affordability side of the equation. 

“It was a matter of having consistent access to the internet,” said Angela Siefer, executive director of the National Digital Inclusion Alliance. “Internet access is not a ‘you have it or you don't have it.’ It's, ‘Do you have what you need all the time, so that it is available when you need it?’”

But that investment in affordability paled in comparison to the money devoted to expanding infrastructure. Of the $90 billion Congress devoted to closing the broadband divide in 2021, the ACP only accounted for $14.2 billion; the rest went to expanding internet access in primarily rural areas.

“The ACP was the most effective program I have ever seen for helping low-income Americans get online and stay online," said FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks at a roundtable hosted by Broadband Breakfast in February. “In fact, I believe truly that it was the most successful program we’ve ever had anywhere in our decades-long bipartisan effort to crack the digital divide.”

That’s no exaggeration. One analysis by the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society found that a dollar spent on the ACP returns nearly two dollars in impacts to those using the program. Another study from The Brattle Group determined that the ACP generated nearly $30 billion in annual savings through improved access to telehealth services alone. 

In some ways, the ACP was a victim of its own success. Because it was a one-time appropriation, the subsidy was gone once the money was spent, and the outpouring of Americans signing up was beyond what anyone predicted. Internet service providers began notifying recipients in January last year that they’d lose the discount; by June, it was gone.

Melvin Lewis was enrolled in the ACP through Computer Reach, a Pittsburgh-based nonprofit working to close the digital divide.

David Freudberg / Human Media

Millions disconnected: Isolation, less groceries, missed appointments

We’re still untangling the impacts of the ACP’s end. Just how many people lost their internet connection as a result is the subject of some debate. 

Census data released last September indicated that 6 million Americans added internet subscriptions after the ACP was introduced in 2022. Then-FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel told Congress in November 2023 that between 20% and 22% of ACP subscribers had no internet subscription before the ACP. That translates to about 4.5 million households.

Wherever the number lies exactly, we know that many millions of people crossed the broadband divide because of the ACP. But how many of them fell back in once the program ended?

In a survey taken in its dying days, about 13% of ACP subscribers, or roughly 3 million households, said they would cancel their service after the subsidy ran out. (Another report predicted the number would be twice as high.)

Those projections are no longer theoretical. A recent Ookla report found that the broadband divide grew in 32 states in the second half of 2024, which lines up almost exactly with the ACP’s end. (Disclaimer: Ookla is owned by Ziff Davis, the same company that owns CNET.)

“We suspect that some of this [broadband divide] was attributed to the ACP ending,” Sue Marek, editorial director at Ookla and author of the report, told CNET’s Cierra Noffke in a previous interview. 

ISPs have also noted losses since the ACP ended, even though many offered their own discounted plans for low-income customers. Spectrum attributed around 200,000 lost subscribers to the end of the program, while Xfinity shed around 79,000. 

Melvin Lewis, a retired musician who lives alone in Pittsburgh and was enrolled in the ACP, said he would only cancel his internet as a last resort.

“It’s extremely important for me,” he said. “I absolutely need this internet. It keeps me connected to the rest of the world.”

For those ACP subscribers who couldn’t afford to keep their internet connection, many are reverting to old strategies for getting online. 

“It’s really sad. People just can’t afford it anymore,” said Kami Griffiths, executive director of the digital equity nonprofit digitalLIFT. “They're going back to what they were doing before, which is using their phones as a hotspot, using their neighbor’s connection if they can, driving or walking to the library or Starbucks.” 

Other options, but nothing as consistent

Since it ended, many former ACP enrollees have switched to low-income internet plans offered directly by providers, which can be less reliable than a federal government subsidy. 

Karen Kama, a 68-year-old digital skills student with the Reading Public Library, told me that she uses Comcast’s low-income plan, which is available to anyone who receives a social service benefit like Medicaid or public housing assistance. She said her monthly payment has already increased from $10 to $15 since she enrolled.

“If they go up again, I'm just going to have that shut off,” Kama said. “I’m on a fixed income. I can't let nothing get out of hand. So if they go up again, then I'm just going to delete that, give them back their box and see if I can do something else.”

Another issue with these plans is that they often don’t allow you to participate if you have an outstanding balance on your account. 

“If you lose your job and miss a bill, you're not eligible for their low-cost plan,” said Drew Garner, a director of policy engagement for the nonprofit Benton Institute for Broadband & Society. “The existing low-cost plans are a drop in the bucket. The ACP was the real key.” 

Since the ACP ended, a number of cities and states have also created their own internet subsidies. Before the ACP ended, New York state began requiring internet providers to offer plans for low-income households starting at $15 a month, which the Supreme Court upheld in December 2024. Similar legislation is on the table in California, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Vermont. 

“It's clearly on the minds of policymakers,” said Jake Varn, an associate manager with The Pew Charitable Trusts’ broadband access initiative. “There's generally a wave of recognition that affordability is a real, serious challenge.”

But this piecemeal approach has its downsides, too. 

“What New York has is an incredible solution,” Siefer said. “But is that ideal that we do this, state-by-state? Absolutely not. We really need to have one solution across the country.”

While there have been several ACP extension bills introduced over the past year, none of them have made it out of committee. Broadband funding generally doesn’t grab headlines -- recent presidential social media posts aside -- and some observers think Congress has been content to let the issue peter out. 

“What we would hear last summer, when we’d go to the Hill, was, ‘Well, you know, since the ACP ran out of funding, we haven't heard from anyone,’” said Danielle Perry, a board member with the trade group The National Lifeline Association. “No kidding, because they don't have a way to get in touch with you.”

The vast majority of federal broadband spending goes toward expanding infrastructure in rural areas, not affordability.

deepblue4you/Getty Images

A loss of trust

There have been a few glimmers of an ACP revival over the past year, but the community organizations I spoke with said it wouldn’t be easy to re-engage those 23 million homes. 

“It took a lot of work to get people signed up, and it took a lot of organizations putting their legitimacy on the line,” said Revati Prasad, executive director for the nonprofit Benton Institute for Broadband & Society. “There's this loss of trust.”

According to a (since-deleted) White House fact sheet, 1 in 4 households participating in the ACP program were Black, 1 in 4 were Latino and nearly half were military families, along with 4 million seniors and 10 million Americans over the age of 50.

Melvin Lewis, the retired musician in Pittsburgh, initially got enrolled in the ACP through Computer Reach, a local nonprofit working to close the digital divide.

“How it was sold to me was like, this is for older people, people in the rural areas, and it’s especially important for us to have,” he said. “Then they just take it away. If this is so important, who’s fighting for us to keep it?”

This was echoed in my conversations with people on the ground who worked to enroll ACP users. Getting people signed up was a huge undertaking, and there’s no guarantee that it would be as successful a second time around. 

“They stuck their necks out for the program. They were trusted messengers,” said Daiquiri Ryan Mercado, strategic legal adviser and policy counsel for the National Hispanic Media Coalition. “And then it kind of just ended with a very short off-ramp period.”

“Can’t live without it”

Each of those 23 million ACP users has a unique story, but a common theme emerged in my conversations: the internet was essential for them, and they were willing to make big sacrifices to stay online. 

When I asked Phyllis Jackson whether she ever thought about canceling her internet after the ACP ended, she seemed shocked that I would even ask. 

“Oh no! I can’t live without it,” she said. “I will find some way -- cutting down on food or heat or whatever. Because it's really necessary.”

Dorothy Burrell, the digital navigator with Essential Families in Kansas City, gave me the same answer. “Never. Never. You need it. You need the internet no matter what," she said. 

Melvin Lewis said he would only cancel his internet as a last resort. 

“Internet is something you just absolutely have to have,” he said. “It's like having lights or water or sewage. I don't know how people get along without it.”

What other low-income internet options are available?

There’s no one resource that’s been a substitute for the Affordable Connectivity Program, but there are several options available that can help low-income families pay for internet. Here’s what’s out there:

• Lifeline: This federal subsidy provides $9.25 per month toward phone or internet services, but the income requirements are lower than the ACP’s: 135% of the federal poverty guideline, or $43,402 for a family of four. You can also qualify if you participate in Federal Public Housing Assistance, Medicaid, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Supplemental Security Income, Tribal-specific programs or the Veterans Pension and Survivors Benefit Programs.
• State and local resources: Many states and cities created their own low-income internet subsidies after the ACP ended. The best way to find local programs is by searching "[location] internet resources" in Google. You can also use CNET’s guide to low-income internet options in all 50 states. 
• Low-income plans from internet providers: Many internet providers had their own discounted plans before the ACP, and they started offering them again after it ended. The National Digital Inclusion Alliance, a nonprofit dedicated to closing the digital divide, developed a scoring system called Grading Internet for Good based on factors like cost, transparency and plan performance. You can see these ratings in the table below, along with some basic information about each plan.

To find which providers are available in your area, put in your address on the FCC’s broadband map. This will give you a list of every provider that serves your home. To see what plans are available, you’ll have to enter your address on each provider’s website individually.