By Christopher Cole

Law360 (June 15, 2021, 4:01 PM EDT) -- The Federal Communications Commission should beef up Lifeline subsidies now so low-income consumers can maintain internet service after emergency broadband funds run out, a Lifeline providers' group has told the agency.

With a onetime congressional appropriation for the Emergency Broadband Benefit, or EBB, quickly moving toward exhaustion, the FCC needs to incorporate it into Lifeline and raise the Lifeline subsidy by $50 per month, among other things, the National Lifeline Association said.

The group urged the FCC to open public comments on a range of Lifeline proposals that the association has floated for ensuring broadband connectivity and making needed fixes to the telecom subsidy, according to a June 9 ex parte notice.

"We had the meeting in hopes of getting the FCC to put the petition out for comment [because] we believe the agency needs to take action now to make Lifeline post-EBB ready," an attorney for the group, John Heitmann of Kelley Drye & Warren LLP, told Law360. "We can't really afford to wait until the EBB program is over and then fix Lifeline."

The EBB coronavirus-response program subsidizes up to $50 of a qualifying household's monthly internet bill or up to $75 of monthly internet service on tribal lands. It can also cover $100 toward a one-time equipment purchase that would allow households to get online as long as the household purchases the equipment through its internet provider. The $3.2 billion program will last for an indeterminate amount of time until all the money has been claimed.

In the recent phone meeting, the NLA followed up on an April 19 petition for rulemaking that put forward numerous changes to Lifeline to prepare for subsidizing broadband.

The NLA's counsel said the commission "should not work in a linear fashion, but rather consider important improvements to the Lifeline program now so that those improvements can be in place when the EBB funding runs out," the ex parte letter says.

One of the NLA petition's central proposals is to raise the Lifeline subsidy enough to cover broadband.

"The Lifeline reimbursement of $9.25 per month is woefully inadequate to provide affordable access to the level of broadband needed today as the nation emerges from the pandemic with remote learning, telework and telehealth becoming enduring aspects of societal and economic shifts created in response to the crisis," the group said.

The FCC also needs to act quickly to make Lifeline "a suitable successor to the EBB Program" by incorporating elements of the emergency benefit, the NLA said.

Along with raising the Lifeline support amount by $50 to make the emergency benefit permanent, the commission should "create downward pressure" on the needed support over time by approving more Eligible Telecommunications Carrier applications, the NLA said. Also, the commission should reinstate "port freeze" rules that limit switching broadband providers under Lifeline, to "drive down churn, lowering the costs of maintaining robust service offers," the organization said.

Moreover, the FCC should depend less on lawmakers stepping up to support Lifeline, it said. "Sources of supplemental funding should be explored, but Lifeline should not be dependent on discretionary spending subject to the annual congressional appropriations process."

The providers' group also recommended a wide range of changes including eliminating or adjusting Lifeline's one-per-household rule; reducing "regulatory uncertainty and burdens;" increasing Lifeline competition by "more effectively" administering ETC designations; and fixing the National Verifier to reduce abandonment rates.

The NLA also proposed a public dashboard through the Universal Service Administrative Co., which runs FCC subsidy programs, "displaying key Lifeline enrollment and de-enrollment metrics along with data regarding the timeliness and expense of National Verifier eligibility verification methods."

Further, the petition endorses full Lifeline support for voice service, noting that "no stakeholder has argued for its phase-out."

The FCC did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

--Additional reporting by Kelcee Griffis. Editing by Orlando Lorenzo.

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