Measuring America's Digital Future

• What it is: Offers long-term guaranteed loans to finance traditional telecommunications infrastructure, focusing on maintaining and expanding reliable services in rural hubs.
• Who qualifies: Qualified telephone companies or cooperatives, nonprofits, limited dividend associations, mutual associations, or public bodies.
• Minimum speeds: Networks must be engineered to actively remove outdated legacy bottlenecks and support reliable broadband service.
• Funding available/status: Subject to annual federal budgetary allocations; applications are accepted continuously.
• How awards are made: Processed on a year-round, non-competitive basis, reliant on financial and engineering viability.

This initiative prioritizes keeping rural lifelines operational while prepping communities for digital expansion. Eligible rural areas must not be contained within the boundaries of any incorporated or unincorporated city, village, or borough with a population exceeding 5,000 residents.

• What it is: A foundational USF program designed to offset the high costs of expanding internet networks into hard-to-reach rural geographies.
• Who qualifies: Eligible telecommunications companies (ETCs) who commit to expanding fixed voice and broadband services to high-cost populations.
• Minimum speeds: Progressively increased from 4 Mbps to 10 Mbps for legacy phases, with moving targets adapting alongside federal benchmarks like 25/3 Mbps and later 100/20 Mbps.
• Funding available/status: Largely legacy; actively shifting focus to RDOF to cover remaining gaps with faster, higher-capacity networks.
• How awards are made: Cost modeling allocations and competitive reverse auctions.

The Connect America Fund provides funding to ETCs to help cover the costs of deploying broadband service in areas that are deemed high-cost, rural, or insular, where market conditions do not favor deployment without government intervention. CAF was initially proposed in 2010 as part of the FCC’s National Broadband Plan.

The first phase of CAF involved a total of $4.5 billion in subsidies doled out between 2012 and 2015 to ETCs who promised to build out broadband service in underserved and unserved areas. Under Phase I of CAF, ETCs were required to offer services of at least 4 Mbps. In 2014, the FCC approved Phase II of CAF, which allocated an additional $1.8 billion in funding per year. During Phase II, the FCC increased the minimum speeds to 10 Mbps. However, it wasn’t until 2018 that the FCC conducted a reverse auction to allocate funds to eligible areas in the U.S. During the auction, 103 bidders were awarded a total of $1.49 billion in funds over 10 years to provide broadband service to more than 700,000 locations in 45 states. As of 2025, the FCC has shifted focus from legacy CAF expansions toward more robust technological standards, using the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) to drive deployments capable of meeting heavier modern household demands.

• What it is: A federal support program providing discounted internet and telecommunications services to educational facilities.
• Who qualifies: Primary/secondary schools (without endowments exceeding $50 million) and independent, nonprofit print or digital libraries.
• Minimum speeds: No strict mandate; based on capacity needed to meet FCC targets (e.g., 1 Mbps per student).
• Funding available/status: An annual cap of $4.46 billion for Funding Year 2024.
• How awards are made: Service providers offer discounted rates to qualifying institutions and are reimbursed by the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC).

Also known as E-Rate, this program offers discounts on telecommunication and broadband services to schools and libraries. E-Rate was launched in 1996 and has helped the U.S. achieve near-universal broadband access in schools.

The FCC updated the E-Rate program in 2014 to include Wi-Fi networks, and in 2024 began taking steps to extend support for off-premises Wi-Fi hotspots for students lacking home internet. Eligible schools must not have endowments larger than $50 million, and eligible libraries must be nonprofit and have budgets that are completely separate from the school.

Discounts range from 20 percent to 90 percent and are available to eligible entities based on the level of poverty in the community they serve, with different rates for urban and rural areas. E-Rate program funding is demand-based, with an annual Commission-established cap of $4.76 billion for Funding Year 2024.

• What it is: A USF subsidy ensuring rural healthcare partners can afford the high-capacity broadband needed for digital records and telehealth.
• Who qualifies: Eligible public or nonprofit health care providers (HCPs) in rural areas.
• Minimum speeds: Varies; targets enterprise-grade connectivity sufficient for remote medicine.
• Funding available/status: Active; capped at $724 million for Funding Year 2025.
• How awards are made: HCPs receive discounted communication services; participating ISPs are then reimbursed.

This program provides funding to eligible health care providers (HCPs) for telecommunications and broadband services to support telemedicine applications. In the program, HCPs apply for discounts, and the USAC coordinates with telecom providers and internet service providers (ISPs) to deliver broadband service. The USAC then reimburses the ISPs. The program was historically capped at $400 million annually, but the FCC now adjusts the cap for inflation each year, raising it to $724 million as of Funding Year 2025. It currently comprises four programs: the Healthcare Connect Fund, the Telecommunications Program, the Internet Access Program, and the Rural Health Care Pilot Program.

• What it is: A multi-billion-dollar USF initiative bridging the digital divide by funding broadband networks in completely unserved rural areas.
• Who qualifies: Telecommunications providers who bid aggressively in FCC reverse auctions.
• Minimum speeds: Bidders must deliver at least 25/3 Mbps, though higher weight is assigned to gigabit-level, low-latency commitments.
• Funding available/status: Phase I was initially awarded $9.2 billion. Phase II targets have since been conceptually absorbed by modern NTIA programs.
• How awards are made: Through two rounds of a multi-tiered reverse auction process.

The FCC previously announced the creation of a third broadband initiative within the Universal Service Fund, launched in 2020: the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund. The FCC hopes the fund will connect up to 5.2 million rural homes and businesses to gigabit-speed broadband services. It will repurpose funds to allocate $20.4 billion in subsidies to telecommunications companies over a 10-year period through an auction process.

• What it is: A transformative $42.45 billion program to expand high-speed internet by funding physical network construction in unserved and underserved regions.
• Who qualifies: All 50 states, Washington, D.C., and U.S. territories use these funds to distribute subgrants to ISPs, utility cooperatives, and local governments.
• Minimum speeds: Funded projects must deliver dependable connections of at least 100/20 Mbps.
• Funding available/status: Active and heavily funded. Allocation totals across all states and territories reached $42.45 billion in 2023.
• How awards are made: States established competitive grant selection frameworks tailored to their respective unserved metrics.

The BEAD program represents the largest single federal investment in broadband deployment in U.S. history. By leveraging precise availability data from the National Broadband Map, states use BEAD funding to ensure households entirely unserved by high-speed networks get top priority for new gigabit-capable infrastructure projects.

Beyond the primary telecommunications authorities, several other federal departments manage programs that can be utilized to improve local internet infrastructure:

• Economic Development Administration (EDA): The U.S. Department of Commerce’s EDA Facilities and Public Works program provides funding for the construction of critical infrastructure in high-cost areas. The funds typically go towards water and sewer infrastructure, though some communications projects have received funding through the program.
• Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD): The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Community Development Block Grant Programs provide funding to promote access to broadband, including through the acquisition, installation, or improvement of broadband networks. States and cities that allocate CDBG funding decide whether to prioritize broadband access projects.
• Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC): The Appalachian Regional Commission is a regional economic development agency that represents a partnership of federal, state, and local governments. Its grant program aims to expand broadband access in the Appalachian region by helping to create community broadband networks that can be used by all sectors of the community. Its projects have included building out fiber optic rings, deploying broadband in industrial parks and business incubators, and piloting emerging broadband technologies. Most ARC project grants originate at the state level and are supported through state and federal funds.