20 internet service providers have agreed to offer high-speed internet plans at a discounted rate for participating customers under a new White House plan. Companies like Comcast, AT&T, and others will provide $30 dollar monthly plans as part of the "affordable connectivity program" -- potentially reaching 48 million households in rural and low-income areas. Michael Kadisha, CEO, Maple, joined Cheddar's Opening Bell to discuss.



Opening Bell

White House Offers Subsidized Internet Access to Low-Income Households

we're joined by Michael, Kadisha Ceo of Maple. Thank you so much for being here, Michael. Can you break down this plan just a little bit more who exactly qualifies and how people can sign up. Right, so I'm happy to be on. Thanks for inviting me. Um This is for low income families across the country. The federal government has put it put across several programs in support of connecting students online. This is just one of the programs. Um but they have the rate they have the emergency connectivity fund and and they have the infrastructure bill. This really is a nonpartisan issue. Um Getting students connected online is an important function for the economy and just to give a little bit more information on that. Um right now, because of the online learning disruptions of low income families across the US, um you have About a 5% decline in average earnings over their career. Okay. Um and when you, when you calculate that over 50 million students in K through 12, education in the us, it would amount to about $2 trillion dollars in decline in lifetime lifetime earnings. And so this is kind of what's driving the interest from both sides of the aisle to support different programs similar to the affordable connectivity program. This is for about 48 million households around the country. Um those who are under the poverty line and Um what they've done is they've negotiated with 20 leading Internet providers covering more than 80% of the us population across urban, suburban and rural areas. Two Cap the cost of Internet service by $30 a month and $75 a month on tribal lands. Got it. Thanks so much for just highlighting some of the significance of this. We've spoken about the digital divide especially when it comes to the pandemic. So we know this could be a game changer. Again, can you just highlight how people get involved in this program and what this means? Why is this so important? Why um why will this offer solutions moving forward? What does the positive look like? So I mean when, when speaking about the digital divide, people often think about it as though it's a binary idea that half the country is connected and half the country is not when in actuality, this is uh you know, further from the nothing could be further from the truth, you have Um students where they're sharing one phone, their mother's phone each evening to do their homework. 5, 5 students per phone um with unstable internet connection. We've all heard about the students that are going to Mcdonald's to get their homework done or local cafes with internet access. You have students in rural areas of America that have no connection online whatsoever because they live in a dead zone. They're not serviced there. Um and this is ultimately what's driving this learning gap and the different programs that are available which you can go directly on the affordable connectivity programs website to apply. Um These are, these are these are the programs that will support um the millions of students around the country that right now have unreliable connection at home. It's important to note that the emergency connectivity fund that was first launched in the summer of 2021. Um the last funding round is available on friday so the it closes actually on friday and schools around the country can apply on the FCC website on on usak and unlock government funding that provides wifi hotspots for students across their district and um they've committed $4 billion so far of federal funding. This next round is going to be a billion dollars um and it most likely is going to be the final round depending on the demand. Um but we've had billions of dollars committed to large and small districts around around the country and the way that it works for for the emergency connectivity fund is that they will prioritize rural communities that currently don't have uh adequate access. I can't help but wonder how much timing plays into this, Do you think that schools will be able to take advantage of this program in enough time? It's the end of the school year, we know that a lot of schools are facing shortages in terms of labor and the availability of teachers during this time. Do you think enough has been done to get the word out about this program. Look, I mean that that is the issue, you know, the schools that we've been speaking to, we've been responsible for trying to um educate people on the, on on this program and the benefits that it could provide for their district. Um I think yes, uh to be honest, there has been a discrepancy between the communication coming from the White House and the communication coming from the FCC and the different um school districts around the country, having the awareness to even apply in the first place, and we, as a private company have been responsible for catering to that need. And I think that that really is the beauty here and and the benefit, the relationship between public and private is very important when you're talking about an issue as big and as important as bridging the digital divide, and it's important to note that, you know, there are other issues like climate change, you know, we have poverty and such that are issues that you can't really solve overnight. Um and I think what's fueling this, the nonpartisan bipartisan approach to finding solutions to connecting students online, it's as easy as getting a wifi hotspot like ours in the hands of millions of students around the country, it's something that you could literally fix overnight and um the relationship that the government has welcomed with private companies like ours has been critical in bridging that bridging the solution and I, I would just add one more thing, it's not only about distributing these wifi hotspots, it's about a common sense approach and the difference between our hotspots and conventional ones that are available on the market is that the sim cards and these devices are not in the actual device, they're sitting in a server remotely. And if you think about districts like new york or Los Angeles or Puerto rico distributing hundreds of thousands of wifi hotspots for students around the country through government funding, um you need control, you need logistics, you need management and such. And so the fact that the sim cards are remote allows us to manage their fleets completely remotely. Michael, Kadisha Ceo, of Maple, thanks so much for joining us and really putting the issue into perspective.