T-Mobile’s Education Initiative Connects 3 Million Students

T-Mobile just announced that it connected over 3 million students in a single year through its free Internet program for school-age kids. This is a significant benchmark for such a recent educational initiative. 

Responding to the struggles many students faced with staying connected for remote learning, T-Mobile launched “Project 10Million” in September 2020, near the height of pandemic school closures. Project 10Million provides students enrolled in the National School Lunch Program with free high-speed data, free wireless hotspots, and at-cost devices. School administrators apply on behalf of their students, which helps maximize the program’s reach. In total, T-Mobile committed $10.7 billion towards its goal of connecting at least 10 million students by 2025.

Now with 3 million students connected in Project 10Million’s first year, T-Mobile’s investment is paying off, and it’s well on pace to reach 10 million students. This makes Project 10Million one of the largest and most successful private programs ensuring low-income persons get and stay connected.

Free State Foundation scholars support private initiatives by our nation’s broadband providers that boost adoption and narrow the digital divide. T-Mobile’s initiative is commendable, especially with the COVID-19 pandemic still impacting everyday life.

Comcast Announces Additional Voluntary Steps to Promote Broadband Adoption, Remote Learning, and Digital Equity

Comcast launched its low-cost Internet Essentials program in 2011. Over the last decade, it has connected millions of eligible low-income families at the discounted price of $9.95 per month, provided tens of thousands of free laptops, and invested hundreds of millions to promote digital literacy.

The ongoing public health crisis has focused greater attention on digital divides, remote learning, and digital equity. Today Comcast announced additional voluntary efforts to address these concerns.

Comcast's Internet Essentials program arguably is the leading example of the broadband industry's commitment to make high-speed Internet access more affordable for low-income families, but there certainly are others.

Such programs have been highly successful. So successful, in fact, that Congress made sure to leverage them in the recently passed COVID-19 relief package.

As I described in a recent post to the Free State Foundation's blog, Congress has appropriated $3.2 billion to the FCC for an Emergency Broadband Benefit Program that will provide discounts on broadband service during the COVID-19 pandemic. In doing so, it directed the agency to automatically approve providers offering "an established program as of April 1, 2020, that is widely available and offers internet service offerings to eligible households and maintains verification processes that are sufficient to avoid fraud, waste, and abuse."

The additional actions that Comcast announced today "to help connect as many Americans to the Internet as possible and create new opportunities for underrepresented communities through the education, resources, and skills training they need to succeed in today’s digital economy" include:

• Increasing, automatically and at no cost, Internet Essentials downstream speeds from 25 to 50 Mbps and upstream speeds to 5 Mbps for all new and existing customers on March 1;
• Continuing to provide 60 days of free service to new Internet Essential customers through June 30, 2021;
• Expanding its commitment to connect Lift Zones – safe spaces at Boys & Girls Clubs and other locations where students can access free Wi-Fi – to cover 1,000 locations by the end of 2021; and
• Providing $3.5 million in grants to "help[] more people of color gain the education and critical workforce development skills needed to access career opportunities in media and technology" as part of its $40 million pledge in 2020 to invest in partners focused on education and digital equity. Current recipients include CodePath, Genesys Works, Jobs for the Future, NPower, i.c. stars, Opportunity at Work, Goodwill Industries International, YWCA, and Philadelphia Youth Network.

As I highlighted in a May 2020 Perspectives from FSF Scholars, Comcast and other broadband providers didn't merely sign on to then-Chairman Pai's Keep Americans Connected pledge; many elected to go above and beyond the specific commitments – not terminating service to those unable to pay as a result of the pandemic, waiving late fees, and opening Wi-Fi hotspots to all Americans – set forth therein.

Providing new Internet Essentials customers with 60 days of free service was just one of the steps Comcast took at that time. Others included increasing downstream speeds from 15 to 25 Mbps, providing two months of free service to university students, and suspending data limits.

Further details on Comcast's commitment to education and digital equity are available here.

USTelecom Report on Broadband Documents Price Reductions, Speed Increases

USTelecom – The Broadband Association recently released a report comparing 2015 broadband pricing and speeds to those available today. "2020 Broadband Pricing Index: An Analysis of Decreasing Prices and Increasing Value for Broadband Service Over Time," as its name suggests, finds that "Americans are paying less today for broadband services that are significantly more capable than they were five years ago."

A few highlights:

• The price of the most popular broadband service tier is 20.2 percent lower in 2020 than it was in 2015 – and 28.1 percent lower when inflation is taken into account.
• Savings are even greater for the highest-speed tier: 37.7 percent (and 43.9 percent when inflation is considered).
• Speeds, meanwhile, have increased, by 15.7 percent for the most popular offering and 27.7 percent for the highest-speed offering.

All of this is made possible by the $70-80 billion that providers invest annually in broadband infrastructure.

And while these statistics make plain that broadband is far more affordable than in the past, USTelecom at the same time acknowledges that there is more work to be done by government and private stakeholders to remove obstacles to adoption.

As I noted in a previous post, USTelecom is a partner in the "K-12 Bridge to Broadband" initiative, which works with school districts to identify, and connect at discounted rates, the 30 percent of students who lack the connectivity necessary to participate in remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The full report, authored by Arthur Menko, founder, Telcodata and Business Planning, Inc., is available here.

Cable Industry Expands Distance Learning Support with "K-12 Bridge to Broadband"

As part of the cable industry's commitment to support of distance learning, NCTA – The Internet & Television Association (NCTA), in conjunction with EducationSuperHighway (ESH), yesterday announced the "K-12 Bridge to Broadband" public-private initiative to increase home connectivity opportunities for students during the COVID-19 pandemic. USTelecom and NTCA also are partners in this effort.

According to ESH, a national non-profit, nearly 10 million students, half of whom are of color, lack Internet access. As a result, they risk falling behind as schools, in response to the health risks posed by the novel coronavirus, shift in part or entirely to distance-learning models. The goal of "K-12 Bridge to Broadband," therefore, is to "identify and potentially connect students in low-income families, enabling more students to participate in remote or hybrid learning."

In a press release, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai "thank[ed] NCTA and the EducationSuperHighway for launching this initiative to make it easier for students in low-income families to connect to the Internet."

"K-12 Bridge to Broadband" builds upon, and expands nationwide, recent successful partnerships between cable operators and school districts in cities that include Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Las Vegas, and Des Moines.

Pursuant to the announced framework of core principles, participating cable broadband providers will:

• Create a “sponsored” service offering that school districts can purchase at a discounted rate on behalf of low-income students;
• Work with school districts to identify students lacking access while also protecting participant privacy and the confidentiality of provider records;
• Agree to a baseline set of eligibility standards that covers, at a minimum, households with students participating in the federal Free and Reduced Lunch program;
• Minimize the amount of information families must provide in order to maximize adoption; and
• Agree not to use school-provided information for the targeted marketing of unrelated services.

The "K-12 Bridge to Broadband" builds upon existing cable industry efforts to support distance learning, which include:

• Longstanding broadband adoption programs for low-income families such as Internet Essentials from Comcast, Charter's Spectrum Internet Assist, and Connect2Compete from Cox;
• Voluntary extension of the FCC's Keep Americans Connected Pledge principles through the end of the last school year; and
• Additional steps above and beyond the specifics of that pledge, including providing multiple months of free service to eligible households that include students, increasing speeds, and removing data caps.