30 OCT

FCC chair wants to impose a cap on broadband funding for poor families

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai wants to impose a budget cap on the Lifeline program that helps poor people buy broadband and phone service.

Under previous Chairman Tom Wheeler, the 32-year-old Lifeline program was expanded to let poor people use a $ 9.25 monthly household subsidy to buy Internet service. Previously, the subsidy could only be used for phone service.

But when Pai took over the chairmanship, he quickly got to work rolling back some of Wheeler’s Lifeline changes. Pai, a Republican, ramped up his attempts to place limits on Lifeline last week with a proposal that will likely be approved by the commission at its meeting on November 16.

Read 17 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Ars Technica

Post Author: martin

Martin is an enthusiastic programmer, a webdeveloper and a young entrepreneur. He is intereted into computers for a long time. In the age of 10 he has programmed his first website and since then he has been working on web technologies until now. He is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of BriefNews.eu and PCHealthBoost.info Online Magazines. His colleagues appreciate him as a passionate workhorse, a fan of new technologies, an eternal optimist and a dreamer, but especially the soul of the team for whom he can do anything in the world.