Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) broadband benefits are set to halt this week, leaving millions of families with a difficult choice to make.

Without a break on his internet bills, Walter Prescher, a pastor living in rural Texas, will have to sacrifice daily essentials or lose the broadband his kids need to do their homework.

Dorrothy Burrell, a 54-year-old Missouri resident who relies on connectivity to attend health appointments, order medication, and follow YouTube exercise routines, will have to figure out how to pay for service, having got online for the first time in 2022 thanks to ACP. 

And Mississippi resident Kenneth Sigler will struggle to pay for connectivity that is essential to run his small business and to manage his mental health. He attends psychiatry appointments online.

For the sake of Dorrothy, Walter, Kenneth, and 60 million other Americans who depend on ACP, the program must be renewed. But we can’t stop there.

This month, Texas Senator Ted Cruz called the US “the standard bearer for high-speed internet connectivity”, lauding the US sector as more competitive than its European peers. In reality, the US has some of the world’s highest internet prices, thanks to years of industry consolidation, anti-consumer practices, and corporate lobbying to block competition.

Studies consistently show Europeans pay about half what Americans do for the same level of service. In the UK, Germany, Spain, and France, subscribers pay $30-40 on average for home internet. In Poland, Lithuania, and Hungary it’s under $20. Meanwhile cable.co.uk estimates that Americans pay an average of $60 a month — plus a slew of junk fees. If you live in rural America, you’ll pay far more.

High prices keep people offline. Education Superhighway found that cost is the primary barrier for the two in three US households that remain unconnected. A massive 39% of families surveyed by US News said they had cut back on expenses like food, gas, and childcare, to cover broadband bills.

While ACP is essential to limit the number of families being pushed off the digital precipice, it doesn’t address the broken nature of a sector which has left over 80 million Americans with only one choice of provider.

Getting to the root of the problem means changing the way broadband is built and shaping a more competitive sector.

This is already happening. A growing number of communities are building their own solutions in the form of municipal and community-owned networks, co-ops, and public private partnerships.

Take Pharr, a small city in South Texas which recently sat at the bottom of the league tables for broadband. Fed up with waiting for better service, city leaders set up TeamPharr.Net as a municipally-owned network that has now laid almost 400 miles of fiber.

As the network was created to serve residents rather than maximize profit, the city has been able to create genuinely affordable options, offering a base package of 500 Mbps symmetrical for just $25 — effectively no-cost for those on ACP. And a partnership with the school district provided free gigabit service for households with school-aged children.

Similarly, a municipal network in Fort Collins, Colorado offers a $20 gigabit symmetrical plan for qualifying households and is putting 6% of network revenues into a digital equity fund to help get more residents connected.

In Vermont, a network of Communications Union Districts has formed to rapidly expand high-speed internet across the state’s rural communities. One of these, ECFiber, announced it will cover the full ACP benefit while searching for long term solutions. This is on top of an additional $20 subsidy it provides low-income subscribers.

Mission-driven private sector players are also innovating. For example, Connect Humanity investee Wave 7 Communications — a family-run ISP in rural North Carolina — has a suite of features to make service more affordable. Customers can set monthly spending limits and there’s an “always-on” tier so customers still have a base level of service if they fall behind on bills. And just this month, Los Angeles County announced a partnership with WeLink, a challenger ISP, to extend low-cost, high-speed internet to 275,00 homes and businesses.

While these are just some of the hundreds of community-centric networks popping up across the nation, they remain the exception, not the rule.

President Biden’s historic broadband infrastructure investment program was meant to change that. But while originally envisioned to support community-centric initiatives in the neediest places, language prioritizing non-traditional providers has been stripped away and it now looks like the lion’s share of the $42B will go to the same incumbents that have left America with a patchwork of overpriced, often slow, service.

People in places like Pharr and Fort Collins are far better placed to weather the end of ACP because they have high-quality affordable options. This is what’s possible when your commitment as an internet provider is to community members before shareholders.

To support these community broadband initiatives and ensure that marginalized communities don’t miss out yet again, there is a critical need for philanthropic and impact-driven investments. 

Connect Humanity was created to catalyze investments for community-centric networks and has so far leveraged +$45 million for projects delivering impact and responsible returns. We’ve just announced a new fund to scale that impact in Appalachia — one of the country’s least connected regions — with Microsoft as a partner providing first-loss capital.

We won’t close the digital divide by doubling down on the same models that have failed to solve the problem over the last 20 years. But by backing the community broadband approaches that are working, the US can be a true “standard bearer for high-speed internet”.