FCC could tighten federal Lifeline program rules

The Federal Communications Commission last week voted to advance new rules for its Lifeline program, including tightened eligibility requirements, in the face of what some members called “serious integrity issues.”

Under new rules proposed by Chair Brendan Carr, Lifeline would only be available to U.S. citizens and those with qualified status, while enhanced vetting requirements would ensure that support is only being given to “legal, living and eligible” residents. There would be regular comparisons between Lifeline subscriber lists and Social Security death records, all in a bid to ensure that “taxpayer-funded benefits are provided only to eligible recipients,” FCC officials said.

“My position on this is clear,” Carr said during the commission’s monthly meeting last week. “To receive federal subsidies like Lifeline, you must be a living and lawful beneficiary.  The government should not be spending the money of hardworking Americans to provide phone and internet service to dead people.”

Lifeline has existed since 1985 and provides a discount on phone and internet service for qualifying low-income customers. It’s financed by the Universal Service Fund, which is funded from contributions from each telecom service provider and then passed onto customers via their monthly bills. The USF was determined to be constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court last year.

The FCC’s proposal to tweak Lifeline’s eligibility requirements comes on the heels of a recent report from the FCC Office of Inspector General, which found that 117,000 dead people in California, Oregon and Texas received $5 million in Lifeline benefits between 2020 and 2025. Duplicate enrollments, where more than one monthly benefit was claimed for one person, accounted for another $5.5 million in erroneous payments.

The report said around 80% of dead subscribers lived in California, which was one of several states to opt out of the federal Lifeline program until November, when the FCC revoked that status. States that opt out — currently Oregon and Texas — set their own eligibility verification and subscriber databases, and do not use the federal National Verifier to check eligibility. Separately, the FCC this month launched an investigation into Lifeline providers in those opt-out states that it has described as “suspect.”

In response, the California Public Utilities Commission, which administers the California Lifeline program, said there are “no changes” to the state program and it is not being eliminated.

Carr said every deceased individual identified is being de-enrolled from the program, which he added needed to be run properly.

“This failure in oversight undermines both taxpayer confidence and the program’s ability to serve the low-income Americans that actually need the services,” Carr said. “That is why I am advancing reforms to ensure that only living, lawfully eligible individuals participate in the Lifeline program, consistent with federal law. If adopted, these program changes would strengthen eligibility verification, close loopholes identified by the Inspector General, and restore confidence in Lifeline.”

Lifeline has been a partisan punching-bag for a long time, with Republicans alleging it is full of waste, fraud and abuse while Democrats have said it is too limited in terms of coverage and these reforms are unnecessary.

Commissioner Anna Gomez called the proposal “shortsighted” and “punitive,” and said during the meeting it is “difficult to ignore the partisan undertones of immigration-related policy proposals that are untethered to demonstrated program integrity issues.”

Opponents of the FCC’s vote said the proposed changes would further limit access to an important tool to help close the digital divide.

“With only one in five eligible households enrolled, this important program is already not reaching all of the families it is designed to serve,” Brenna Leasor, a tech policy advisor at nonprofit Common Sense Media, said in a statement. “And yet the proposed changes, if they are incorporated, will cause children in low-income households to face additional barriers to educational resources, will make parents and caregivers increasingly unable to communicate with their kids’ schools, and cause families to have less access to emergency services.”

Alisa Valentin, broadband policy director at nonprofit Public Knowledge, warned that the FCC is “abandoning” its “role as a facilitator of universal service in favor of acting as a gatekeeper to access.”

“For more than 40 years, Lifeline has been a program dedicated to meeting the communications needs of the nation’s most vulnerable consumers,” Valentin continued in a statement. “Unfortunately, the item before the Commission fails to confront the central question of how the FCC can be more responsive to the growing affordability crisis. Too often, ‘waste, fraud, and abuse’ rhetoric is used as a political shield to sidestep meaningful reform and instead revives debates about ‘deservingness’ to distract from what is truly at stake. The stakes are clear: the rising cost of broadband service and the steady erosion of consumer protections at the FCC.”

The proposal is expected to receive a final vote in the coming months after a period of public comment.