New FCC Emergency Broadband Benefit program to help lower monthly bills
This article originally appeared on WBOY
CLARKSBURG W.Va. – A new order from the FCC will help some residents afford internet and cable.
The Emergency Broadband Benefit Program will lower monthly bills by $50 and will offer a $100 one-time discount on a laptop or tablet.
To be eligible at least one person in your house has to have at least one of the following:
- Benefits from the Lifeline program like Medicaid or SNAP.
- Received free and reduced-price school lunches or breakfast in the 2019-2020 school year.
- Experienced a substantial loss of income since February 29, 2020, and have a total income in 2020 below $99,000 for single filers and $198,000 for joint filers.
- Received Federal Pell Grant.
- Or meets requirements for an existing low-income or COVID-19 program.
“If you think about the subsidy that the FCC is providing it can be up to about 50$ a month,” Liz Powell Director of DOXO Insights said. “So, if you think about the fact that residents on average are paying 107$ a month for cable and internet it can save them about 50$ a month which is essentially about half of what they pay on a regular monthly basis.”
But the program isn’t the only way West Virginians can save.
“There are lots of tools and tactics out there across online and mobile applications for folks to negotiated their bills across all of the most common bill pay categories,” Powell said. “And what we found is that making this information publicly available that consumers are armed with data points that shows how much they pay as compared to the average person in their same area. And so they are much better prepared to go into their biller and negotiate a better rate.”
Sign up’s will be allowed directly through internet providers sometime before the end of April. The latest information on that can be found on the FCC’s Website.