Comcast has announced a major expansion to its Internet Essentials program, which provides home internet access for low-income individuals. The company is expanding eligibility for the program to include all low-income households in its service area.
The expansion — which is the largest in the program's history, according to the company — will make an additional 3-million low income households eligible for the program, including those with disabilities and seniors. As a result, Comcast estimates a total of nearly seven million households now have access to low-cost Internet service, doubling the total number of previously eligible households, according to a press release.
To be eligible for the program, low-income applicants will need to show they are participating in one of more than a dozen different government assistance programs including: Medicaid, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI). A full list of the programs can be found at www.internetessentials.com. Applications are already accepted from households that have a student eligible to participate in the National School Lunch Program, live in public housing or receive HUD Housing Assistance, including Section 8 vouchers, or participate in the Veterans Pension Program, as well as low-income seniors and community college students in select pilot markets, according to the company.
“This expansion is the culmination of an audacious goal we set eight years ago, which was to meaningfully and significantly close the digital divide for low-income Americans,” David L. Cohen, senior executive vice president and chief diversity officer of Comcast NBCUniversal, said in the release. “The Internet is arguably the most important technological innovation in history, and it is unacceptable that we live in a country where millions of families and individuals are missing out on this life-changing resource.
“Whether the Internet is used for students to do their homework, adults to look for and apply for new jobs, seniors to keep in touch with friends and family, or veterans to access their well-deserved benefits or medical assistance, it is absolutely essential to be connected in our modern, digital age.”
Since August 2011, the Internet Essentials program has connected more than eight million low-income individuals, from two million households, to the Internet at home, many for the first time ever, according to the release. Comcast’s Internet Essentials is the largest broadband adoption program in the U.S.
According to U.S. Census data, households in cities with the highest poverty rates are up to 10 times more likely than those in higher earning communities not to have fixed broadband at home. In Bethesda, Md., for example, where poverty rates are very low — only about six percent of households do not have a broadband Internet subscription. But in Trenton, N.J. and Flint, Mich. — where poverty rates are way above the national average — 60 percent or more of households do not have fixed broadband at home, according to the release.
Internet Essentials has an integrated, wrap-around design that addresses each of the three major barriers to broadband adoption that research has identified, according to the company. The barriers include: a lack of digital literacy skills, lack of awareness of the relevance of the Internet to every day life needs, and fear of the Internet, the lack of a computer and cost. As a result, the program includes: multiple options to access free digital literacy training in print, online and in person, the option to purchase an Internet-ready computer for less than $150; and low-cost, high-speed Internet service for $9.95 a month plus tax. The program is “structured as a partnership between Comcast and tens of thousands of school districts, libraries, elected officials, and nonprofit community partners,” the release stated.
