The Trump FCC has voted to kill two different programs that helped bring free Wi-Fi to school kids in underserved poor and rural U.S. communities.

It’s the latest casualty of an administration that has been taking a hatchet to FCC consumer protection and affordability initiatives, many of which were developed over decades – with popular bipartisan support.

The FCC under Brendan Carr on September 30 voted 2-1 to kill the programs, with Republican Olivia Trusty voting with Carr and Democrat Anna Gomez dissenting.

In 2023, the previous FCC expanded the agency’s Universal Service Fund's E-Rate program to help fund free Wi-Fi service on school buses. In 2024, the Biden FCC further expanded the program to help fund schools and libraries looking to lend out Wi-Fi hotspots and services that could be used off-premises by school kids that lacked affordable home broadband.

Both efforts were lauded for bridging the “homework gap,” making it easier and more affordable for kids in disconnected areas to keep up with homework. The expansions incurred no additional costs to taxpayers, leveraging existing USF funding. E-Rate spends about $2 billion annually and has a funding cap of roughly $5 billion.

Both Texas Senator Ted Cruz and FCC Chairman Brendan Carr spent most of 2025 trying to eliminate the programs. At one point, Cruz claimed, falsely, that the program was “censoring kids’ exposure to conservative viewpoints.” Carr, meanwhile, had tried to suggest the program created risks for kids due to unsupervised Internet use.

The FCC’s Universal Service Fund (USF) has survived a Supreme Court challenge by a right wing activist nonprofit, but the program – which for decades has helped extend broadband to underserved rural homes and schools – still faces a precarious immediate future.

It is a peculiar political story, given that the rural regions that overwhelmingly vote for Republicans are now seeing Republicans try to dismantle a program that has been crucial for rural investment and development.

The FCC established the fund in 1997 in compliance with the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Historically a program with broad, bipartisan support, the USF leverages around $8 billion annually to expand broadband access to rural communities, libraries, and schools. The program is primarily paid for by consumers via a small levy on traditional phone lines.

In 2023, a right wing activist nonprofit named “Consumer’s Research” sued the government over the USF, claiming that the FCC lacked the constitutional authority to levy a fee on consumers’ bills. The lawsuit claimed that the USF depended on what amounted to an “unconstitutional tax” on consumers to fund operations.

Congressional Republicans are moving forward on a plan to kill a popular Federal Communications Commission (FCC) program providing free Wi-Fi to schoolchildren. Critics of the repeal say it’s a “cruel” effort that will undermine initiatives to bridge the affordability and access gap for families long stuck on the wrong side of the digital divide.

The effort, spearheaded by Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz, leverages the Congressional Review Act to roll back FCC changes to E-Rate, a government program that helps subsidize deployment of broadband access to rural communities, libraries, and schools.

Accelerated by the remote education boom of pandemic lockdowns, communities country wide had petitioned the FCC to expand the program. The goal: allowing rural schools to leverage E-Rate funding to provide free mobile Wi-Fi hotspots to families that either couldn’t afford broadband – or found broadband entirely out of reach.

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So in July 2024 the FCC voted to expand the program. Historically, E-Rate could only be used to improve access on school or library grounds. The expansion allowed schools to provide limited access to free Wi-Fi hotspots via school buses or other alternatives. The expansion did not involve an increase in the E-Rate budget or any new taxes on U.S. residents. It recognized that the concept of “school” had eclipsed the 20th century definition of a room in a community building.

“I believe every library and every school library in this country should be able to loan out Wi-Fi hotspots to help keep their patrons and kids connected,” former FCC boss Jessica Rosenwocel said when the reforms were announced. “It is 2024 in the United States. This should be our baseline. We can use the E-Rate program to make it happen.”

For Angela Diahkah, what started as a self-described “side hustle” is now her full-time job.

Diahkah – or “Ange,” as she sometimes goes by – is five years into serving as Network Operations Supervisor and Digital Navigator Program Manager for JNET, the Tribally-owned broadband provider for the Pueblo of Jemez.

Just 50 miles northwest of Albuquerque, Angela leads the charge in building a new fiber network, the gold-standard of Internet connectivity, that once complete will serve her community (one of the 19 Pueblos in New Mexico).

Last week, she was at the 17th Tribal Broadband Bootcamp (TBB) in Aguana, California in the hills above Temecula Valley, along with a half dozen JNET technicians-in-training and JNET Director Kevin Shendo. The 30 or so other TBB participants – representing broadband leaders from several other federally-recognized Tribes – were also there for the three-day immersive learning experience focused on building and operating Tribal Internet networks.

Held in different tribal regions several times a year since the initiative began in 2021, this most recent bootcamp was back at TBB co-founder Matthew Rantanen’s “RantanenTown Ranch.”

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“We're basically trying to find a light in a dark tunnel and just work with what’s best for us,” Angela told ILSR in describing why she and her JNET crew had come, just as they are in the early stages building out their own fiber-to-the-home network.

“We want to expose them to the network,” literally and figuratively, she said.

Surf Internet and Newton County, Indiana say they’re expanding a public private partnership (PPP) that will extend gigabit fiber access to 97 percent of the county – or roughly 3,839 Newton County households by the end of this year.

According to a joint announcement, Surf will contribute $6.6 million to the new endeavor, with the Newton County Economic Development Commission (EDC) contributing $4 million. The expansion should extend the gigabit network to Lake Township, Lake Village, Roselawn, Thayer and several additional rural areas.

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Surf Internet also provides access in Michigan and Illinois. The ISP’s service speeds and pricing can vary greatly by market, but range from symmetrical 50 Mbps (megabit per second) service for $35 a month, to symmetrical 1 Gbps (gigabit per second) service for anywhere from $70 to $80 per month, with no caps, hidden fees, or long-term contracts.

Surf Internet first came to Newton County in 2020, when it launched a $1.7 million project– funded by the FCC E-Rate program – that brought fiber connections to the North Newton School District. In 2023, Surf Internet expanded that fiber network to 382 Newton County homes as part of Indiana’s $81 million Next Level Connections (NLC) Broadband Grant Program.

A new report out by the American Library Association shows how community anchor institutions — and libraries in particular — can serve as central players in expanding tribal connectivity efforts around the country. “Built by E-rate: A Case Study of Two Tribally-Owned Fiber Networks and the Role of Libraries in Making It Happen" [pdf] looks at the striking success of tribal efforts in New Mexico in putting together a coalition of actors to dramatically improve Internet access in the region.

The report examines networks built by two consortiums situated in the middle of the state in the summer of 2018: the Middle Rio Grande Pueblo Tribal Consortium and The Jemez and Zia Pueblo Tribal Consortium. An endeavor initially spearheaded by the Santa Fe Indian School (which long ago recognized the need for virtual learning, the value of fast, affordable Internet and the ongoing cost of slow, poor, high monthly costs), “Built by E-Rate” details how they came into being and the obstacles they faced along the way, and offers policy recommendations moving forward.

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Faster Speeds, Lower Costs

The fifth anniversary of the announcement of the KentuckyWired project is approaching later this year. As voters start to assess their candidates’ job performance, the unfinished and over budget middle mile public-private partnership (P3) has become an albatross that incumbents aren’t able to easily cast off. When we last discussed the project in 2017, we shared our observations and misgivings. Not much has changed, except some of our concerns have played out and the project has become troubled by new problems.

In Case You’re Just Arriving to the Party… 

The statewide, massive middle mile project officially began when Kentucky announced in late 2014 that they would build a fiber optic network in order to bring better connectivity to rural areas. They planned to find a private sector partner and sought bids. In the fall of 2015, Australian firm Macquarie won the contract for what soon became an even larger endeavor — a fiber optic network that would enter every county in the state at a minimum of one location. The network would consist of approximately 3,200 miles of fiber and connect about 1,000 public facilities. At the time the project was developed, the state estimated that deployment would cost approximately $300 million.

With early bipartisan support, the state allocated $30 million from their budget, which they expected to combine with $23.5 million in federal grants. When the Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority issued $232 million in tax-exempt revenue bonds and $58 million in taxable revenue bonds to complete financing, Bond Buyer named the issue the “Deal of the Year” for 2015. Macquarie’s timeline estimated an optimistic one-year completion for the entire statewide project.

Last fall, the northern Minnesota community of Ely took up a feasibility study to determine the possibilities of better connectivity with publicly owned Internet infrastructure. They also wanted to explore local interest in investment. After conducting a survey and reviewing the situation, local officials are contemplating moving ahead with two pilot projects.

A Big Demand

Citizens’ group, Ely Area Broadband Coalition (Ely ABC) and the Ely Economic Development Authority (EEDA) collaborated to manage the feasibility study process. In 2016, the Blandin Foundation, the Iron Range Resources Rehabilitation Board (IRRRB), and St. Louis County awarded the city $25,000 which they’ve dedicated toward their efforts to improve local connectivity.

In order to gauge the community’s current feeling about the quality and cost of the services they purchase from area cable and DSL providers, the Ely ABC and the EEDA encouraged area residents and businesses to compete a survey last fall. They wanted evidence to share with potential funding sources that the community was not being served. Community leaders also expected the results to help them decide which direction to take moving forward.

At a recent EEDA meeting, members discussed the survey results and the potential pilot projects.

“We want to see how people are satisfied with what they have and what they feel the needs are,” said Harold Langowski, the city’s clerk-treasurer. “Right now we are assuming everybody wants faster broadband. and that they’re not satisfied with what we have. But we’re only hearing that from people on the committee.”

As schools across the country look at their budgets, Janesville, Wisconsin, has decided to cut their future expenses with a fiber optic investment. This spring, the district will use E-rate funding to help finance a fiber optic local area network (LAN) in order to cut telecommunications costs by $70,000 per year.

Connecting Facilities

The school district will install 12 lines, eliminating leased lines and the associated expense. E-rate funds will pay for $1.6 million of the estimated $2 million project; the school district’s contribution will be approximately $400,700 and an additional $225,000 for engineering and project fees. School district officials calculate their contribution will be paid for in nine years. Fiber optic networks have life expectancies upwards of 20 years and in Janesville, District CIO Robert Smiley estimates this project will last for 50 years.

At a recent Board meeting, Smiley told the members that the new network will be like transitioning “to our own private Interstate.” In addition to better prices, the new infrastructure will allow the district to ramp up speeds to ten times what they current share between facilities. The system Janesville School District uses now has been in place since the 1990s.

The federal E-rate program started during the Clinton administration as a way to help schools fund Internet access and has since been expanded to allow schools to use if for infrastructure. School districts obtain funding based on the number of students in a district that are eligible for the National School Lunch Program. Funding for E-rate comes from the School and Libraries Program from the Universal Services Fund.

“Hello, Savings!”

Like many other schools that have chosen to switch to a district owned fiber network, Janesville sees a big advantage for voice communications. Due to the age of their phone system, they’ve had failures in the past. Last winter during a day of inclement weather, a large volume of incoming calls from parents overloaded the system and other parents who had signed up for emergency alerts on their phones didn’t receive them. With a new fiber network, the school district will be able to switch to VoIP.