The FCC and USAC just eliminated their annoying “port freeze” rule — the regulation that required ObamaPhone users to stay with their service provider for up to one year even if they had really good reasons to switch to a different company.

That’s great news for ObamaPhone customers because the port freeze has always been one of our readers’ biggest complaints.

The old rules required ObamaPhone customers to stay with their current service provider for a full year if their plan included data, and for sixty days if it was voice and text-only.

But thanks to this new regulation, you can no switch service providers any time you want. Theoretically, you could enroll with one ObamaPhone company today, switch to a different one tomorrow, and switch to another one the day after that. Of course, the USAC and FCC don’t anticipate such extreme switching, but it could happen.

That’s very good news for ObamaPhone customers who enrolled with a service provider with a weak or non-existent signal in their area, for those whose who are fed up with their ObamaPhone service providers horrible customer service, and for any customer who wants to switch for any reason.

The USAC.org website explains in more detail:

The Lifeline Program’s port freeze rule was eliminated on March 19, 2018. On that date, port freezes were removed from the National Lifeline Accountability Database (NLAD), and any customers that were in a port freeze had the restriction removed.

USAC will not implement an administrative port freeze. NLAD users should no longer encounter port freeze error messages.

We can always depend on the experts at LifelineLaw.com to explain exactly how you’ll be impacted by the new regulations:

Effective March 19, the Lifeline port freeze rules will be eliminated. The rules, which originally took effect in December 2016, precluded customers from transferring to another provider:

– their Lifeline voice subsidy for 60 days, or
– their Lifeline broadband subsidy for 12 months.

Less than a year later, the FCC determined that the port freeze rules “limit[ed] Lifeline consumers’ ability to seek more competitive offerings and obtain those services that best meet their needs” nor did it promote competition. As part of the rule elimination, NLAD will be updated to remove the port freeze constraints and customers in port freeze status as of that date will have the restriction lifted.

Make the switch

The new regulations eliminate one of the things our readers hate most about the ObamaPhone free government cell phone program.

If you’re unhappy with Lifeline service provider for any reason, switch to another one. If you’re having trouble re-certifying, make the switch. If your service provider’s signal is weak or non-existent, make the switch. If you have a customer service issue and can’t get it resolved, make the switch. If you want a smartphone and your service provider won’t give you one, make the switch. If another company offers more minutes or texts or data, make the switch. If you’re unhappy with your current service provider for any reason, make the switch.

And do it today.

Because there’s no longer any reason to wait now that the port freeze has been eliminated.

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We live in dangerous times. Enemies of the Obama Phone program make no secret of the fact that they want to kill this valuable, important program that helps millions of needy Americans. So it is now time for us to take a stand in favor of the program.

Politicians are complaining that it “costs too much.” But the fact of the matter is that the program is paid for not by taxes, but by a small fee added to every phone bill in the United States.

Regulators are taking aim at the program. Instead of expanding it to include high-speed broadband service, the Federal Communications Commission has reversed course and has “temporarily” killed the broadband expansion.

Proponents of smaller government are hoping the slash spending, especially on government aid programs. President Trump has proposed a budget with $4.1 trillion dollars in cuts on the next ten years — cuts to Medicaid, SNAP (food stamps) and TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families). In other words, cuts to the very programs that make America’s needy eligible for the Obama Phone program.

Here’s how vox.com explains the cuts:

• All $880 billion in Medicaid cuts included in the Republican health plan that has passed the House, plus $610 billion in additional cuts due to adopting an even stingier formula for increasing Medicaid funding year over year. This amounts to a total cut to Medicaid of over 47 percent.
• $191 billion in cuts from Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps, over 10 years. That’s about a 25 percent cut. The administration claims it will achieve this by adding new work requirements, but it would effectively require kicking many people off the program or dramatically cutting benefit amounts.
• $40.4 billion in cuts to the earned income tax credit and child tax credit over 10 years, programs that, along with SNAP, make up much of the US’s safety net for poor people. Trump would require parents receiving benefits to submit a Social Security number to weed out unauthorized immigrants — even those whose children are US citizens.
• $21.6 billion in cuts to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or welfare, over 10 years. That’s a nearly 13 percent cut to the program, which has already been cut dramatically since the 1990s.

Since the rules of the Lifeline Assistance program were changed back in December, 2016 TANF is no longer one of the programs by which you can qualify for an Obama Phone. But Tribal TANF can still be used to qualify by Native Americans.

BusinessInsider.com reports that President Obama recently defended the ObamaCare program against those who would destroy it:

Former President Barack Obama took a swipe at his successor during a private even Thursday, noting that polls have shown the Affordable Care Act to be more popular than President Donald Trump.

A person who attended the event paraphrased Obama’s comments to CNN, saying Obama told the audience in Manhattan that the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, is more popular than the current president.

Recent polling has shown that Obamacare has hit its highest popularity ever, drawing the support of 55% of Americans in a Gallup survey on April 4.

In comparison, the most recent reading on Trump’s approval rating from Gallup on Thursday sat at 43%, with 52% disapproving of the president’s handling of his job.

While this is all well and good, we believe the former President needs to offer an equally strong defense of Obama Phones, his other signature program.

And former President Obama isn’t the only one who needs to speak out. So do you. So do your friends and neighbors. So does anyone who knows how vital this program is to America’s financially disadvantaged.

Here’s how you can make your voice heard and help save the Obama Phone program:

Contact the Federal Communications Commission

Write to the Federal Communications Commission and ask it to keep the Obama Phone program alive. If you want to write a letter or make a phone call, here’s the contact info you need:

Federal Communications Commission
445 12th Street, SW
Washington, DC 20554

If you want to email the FCC Chairman Ajit Pai or any of the other FCC Commissioners, here are their email addresses:

Chairman Ajit Paid: Ajit.Pai@fcc.gov
Commissioner Mignon Clyburn: Mignon.Clyburn@fcc.gov
Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel: Jessica.Rosenworcel@fcc.gov
Commissioner Michael O’Rielly:  Michael.orielly@fcc.gov

If you want to call the FCC, the toll-free phone number is 1-888-CALL FCC (225-5322)

Contact your local member of the House of Representatives.

Tell them how important the Obama Phone program is and demand that it be fully funded. You can find your local representative’s address and phone number here:

http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/

Just plug in your zip code and you will quickly find the name of your local Representative and all his or her contact information.

Contact your United States Senator.

Each state has two United States Senators. Contact each of them to tell how much the Obama Phone program has helped you and your family and implore him or her not to kill the program, but to expand it to even more needy Americans. You can find your United States Senator’s address and phone number here:

https://www.senate.gov/senators/contact/

Don’t just sit there.

Don’t just sit there. Do something. Get active. Make your voice heard. They want to take away your Obama Phone. And if you don’t do something, the Obama Phone program will simply fade away into the mists of history.

Call. Email. Write a letter. But do it now.

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Seventy percent of Americans want their municipal governments to provide internet service according to a recent study conducted by the highly-respected Pew Research Center.

Pew surveyed more than 4,000 people and 70% of them said their local governments should be allowed to build their own high-speed networks if their other choices are “too expensive or not good enough.”

Unfortunately, that’s just not possible in many parts of the United States, because more than 20 states have passed laws make if difficult or impossible for local governments to build out and offer high-speed internet services to their residents.

As CheapInternet.com reported, “There are currently 135 municipalities across the nation that have built or announced plans to build their own fiber optic networks to bring dependable, affordable, high-speed internet service to their residents. On the other hand, twenty states have passed laws — at the behest of cable television and telephone company lobbyists — that inhibit the ability of municipalities to offer cable services to their citizens. Some states have passed such restrictive laws that muni networks are virtually impossible to build or operate.”

BroadbandNow.com breaks down the 20 states into seven categories of difficulty and impossibility:

Administrative Hurdles: North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Virginia
No Direct Sale: Arkansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington
Referendum (or Vote): Alabama, Colorado, Louisiana, and Minnesota
Population Caps: Nevada
Feasibility Studies: Utah
Request for Proposal: Michigan
Excessive Taxes: Florida



It’s easy to see why people love their municipal networks, but changing the laws that prohibit them is far more difficult than it may sound. For example, in 2015 the Federal Communications Commission said municipalities could ignore laws that kept them from building broadband networks, but state legislators, flush with contributions from cable TV companies, eventually kept the prohibitions in place.

Year in and year out, cable TV companies find themselves at the top of lists of companies Americans love to hate. Customers say that prices are outrageously high, service is notoriously poor, and customer service is a joke.

The Pew study, unfortunately, shows that the concept of muni networks is far more popular than broadband subsidies for low-income households. Only 44% of respondents support those subsidies. Most surprising to us, most of the remaining respondents think high-speed internet service “is affordable enough.”

From our point of view, this is the most shocking result of the Pew study. We fully supported the FCC’s recently aborted plan to add Lifeline Broadband to the Obama Phone program. The fact that most Americans think internet service “is affordable enough” frankly leaves us dumbfounded. We know how desperately low-income Americans need more affordable internet service for the same reasons they need Obama Phones — for adults to find jobs and for their children to keep up in school.

It looks as if we need to redouble our efforts in support of the Obama Phone and Lifeline Broadband programs. And your support is needed, too. Please contact your Congressional representatives and the Federal Communications Commission to express your point of view.

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Bureaucrats being bureaucrats, the FCC doesn’t say it has “changed” the rules of the Lifeline Assistance free government cell phone program. No, it says they’ve been “streamlined.” But this small difference in words will make a life-shaking difference to Lifeline customers who lose their free government cell phones because those rules have been “streamlined.”

Here’s the bottom line in plain English: The FCC has eliminated a number of ways needy Americans have always used to qualify and introduced one very important new way to qualify. The new rules make winners some Lifeline customers and make losers out of others.

The winners

Beginning December 2, 2016, you can qualify for an Obama Phone if you receive:

• Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)
• Medicaid, Supplemental Security Income (SSI)
• Federal Public Housing Assistance (FPHA)
• the Veterans Pension benefit will be eligible to receive Lifeline.
• Low-income consumers may also still qualify if their household income is at or below 135% of the Federal Poverty Guidelines.(EDITOR’S NOTE: The definition of income has changed slightly to align with the Internal Revenue Service’s definition of “gross income” to limit the use of this method of qualifying. Those definitions are so technical in nature that we will not bother to explain them at this point.)

Of course, some states still allow Lifeline customers to qualify with even higher incomes, such as 150% of Federal Poverty Guidelines Arizona, Florida, Kansas, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, Ohio, Rhode Island and Texas. Nevada permits you to qualify with a household income up to 175% of those same guidelines. California allows you to qualify with a household income as much as 218%. And depending on whether you’re 65 or older, Vermont may allow you household income to be as much as 234%.

Tribal eligibility

Rather than walking into any regulatory minefields that might have impacted eligibility of Native Americans in the Lifeline Assistance, the FCC decided to leave these regulations unchanged.

Native Americans can qualify for special Lifeline Assistance discounts if at least one person in their household participates in one of the following assistance programs:

• Bureau of Indian Affairs General Assistance (BIA)
• Tribally Administered Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (Tribal TANF)
• Tribal Head Start (only those households meeting its income qualifying standard)
• Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR)

Who are the losers?

The FCC has eliminated the following programs that have in the past been used to qualify for Lifeline Assistance:

• Low–Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP)
• National School Lunch Program’s free lunch program (NSLP)
• Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)
• All state-specified Lifeline eligibility criteria for Lifeline (such as California’s Women, Infants and Children Program; Georgia’s Senior Citizen Low-Income Discount Plan; or Rhode Island’s Pharmaceutical Assistance to Elderly. In order to simplify the program and make it consistent from state-to-state, those and many other state-implemented ways to qualify have been eliminated.

According to the FCC’s theory, these changes will cause minimal inconvenience for Lifeline customers because the vast majority of Lifeline enrollees qualify by participating in just three programs — SNAP, Medicaid, and SSI.

Really?

We’re willing to take a wait-and-see attitude because we know our readers will light up our comment section if the FCC’s assumption turns out to be false.

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In a ruling certain to cause major metaphorical earthquakes in Oklahoma, the Federal Communications Commission has slashed subsidies paid to Lifeline Assistance companies in the Sooner State. Those subsides will end on June 9, 2016. We anticipate that the state’s generous unlimited talk and text and 1000 minutes and text plans will come to a screeching halt soon thereafter.

Here’s what the subsidy scenario is all about:

Obama Phone companies across the nation have always earned $9.25 per customer per month on regular customers, but $34.25 per month on Native American customers living on current or former tribal lands. This special subsidy was instituted in recognition of Native Americans unique history and the stark poverty that afflicts their tribal lands.

What the architects of the Obama Phone program failed to realize was that virtually all of Oklahoma was once Native American tribal land. And that meant Oklahoma Obama Phone companies received the much larger subsidy for every customer they enrolled, not just those who were Native Americans living on tribal lands.

Even if your father was an Albanian albino and your mother was a melanin-deprived Melanesian, Obama Phone companies got $34.25 per month if they signed you up in Oklahoma.

An expensive oversight

The loophole was big enough to drive a truck through: A shocking 99.89% of all low-income Oklahoma residents — including those with no Native American DNA — were eligible for these huge subsidies.

As soon as the first enterprising, but unknown Obama Phone executive figured out that his company could earn $34.25 per customer per month in Oklahoma instead of $9.25 per customer per month they earned in surrounding states, the floodgates opened. Companies large and small immediately began offering Obama Phones across the state.

Thanks to those generous subsidies, Oklahoma, with just 1.2% of the nation’s population suddenly accounted for 6.7% of Obama Phone spending. In other words, Oklahoma Obama Phone companies made 5.6 times more per customer than in other states.

The FCC finally steps in

The Federal Communications Commission finally recognized the subsidy absurdity and acted to bring Oklahoma subsidies in line with the subsidies offered in the rest of the nation.

Ajit Pai, often called “the renegade FCC Commissioner” by his ideological opponents, issued a press release commending the changes:

… the Lifeline program has been giving carriers in Oklahoma six times the national average of support, and about ten times the amount that carriers in neighboring Kansas receive.

Last June, the Commission recognized the absurdity of this situation and declared that those living in much of Oklahoma—including Oklahoma City—would no longer be eligible for tribal subsidies starting February 9. There’s no good reason to subsidize all Oklahoma City residents as if they were tribal members living on tribal lands. As I pointed out then, if Oklahoma’s Lifeline spending per person were only twice the national average, American taxpayers would save over $89 million a year.

The deadline has now been extended from February 9 to June, but it is unlikely that it will be extended again.

The future of Obama Phones in Oklahoma

Simply stated, some smaller, undercapitalized Obama Phone companies and some larger, less efficient ones will no longer be able to make a profit in Oklahoma. Some will undoubtedly close their doors and go out of business. Others will cut back their generous Obama Phone benefits.

For example, Assist Wireless has already announced that it will reduce benefits on its most popular Obama Phone plans. Instead of offering 1000 minutes or texts per month, it will now begin offering 250 Minutes of talk and 250 texts for free, or 300 minutes, 300 texts and 30 Mb of data for just one dollar. The company also offers additional plans with more talk, texts and data for customers who are able and willing to pay more.

Consider this an omen: If you have an Obama Phone in Oklahoma, get ready. The cutbacks are coming.

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The Federal Communications Commission has taken another major step in its efforts to reduce fraud and abuse in the Obama Phone program by assessing $90 million in fines against eleven companies that participate in the program across the country.

According to a report by St Louis, Missouri’s KMOV News 4, the fines have even been assessed against two companies that previously told the station that the allegations were nothing to worry about.

Watch the video (which sometimes doesn’t come up):

The FCC stated that Maryland-based Cintex Wireless intentionally targeted customers whose incomes were not low enough to qualify for Obama Phones. The company “earned” millions of dollars by enrolling these unqualified people.

When KMOV sent its news team to research the story, one Cintex representatives claimed to know nothing about the fines and another one was on vacation.

Despite the fact that Cintex’ legal team says they abide by the rules of the Obama Phone program, the FCC hit the company with a $9.5 million fine for allegedly violating the rules.

In an earlier report, the KMOV News 4 team learned that Life Wireless, a division of Telrite, was shipping Obama Phones to Missouri residents who said they had never enrolled in the program. After conducting a thorough audit of the company’s business, the FCC agreed and imposed a $22 million fine.

Global Connection, another Obama Phone competitor, was assessed a $12 million fine on the same day.

In addition to the $43.5 million in fines on Cintex, Life Wireless and Global Connection, the FCC has imposed fines of nearly $47 million against 8 additional Lifeline Assistance (Obama Phone) providers in the last three months. The companies have two options — either pay the fines or appeal them — and it has yet to be determined which choice the companies will make.

According to industry observers, there may be more than 2 million fraudulent Obama Phone accounts. The program has been plagued with fraud and abuse and the intent of the FCC audits are intended to clean up the troubled program.

Video source: KMOV

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The Lifeline Assistance program (popularly called the Obama Phone program) provides financially disadvantaged Americans with a free cell phone and 250 minutes of airtime each month. The service is free in order to help those who can’t afford a cell phone so they can keep in touch with employers, health care providers and family. But now the state of Georgia has begun charging each user a $5 fee each month for what is supposed to be a free service.

Georgia state Public Service Commissioner Doug Everett says that the fee is designed to reduce fraud in the program. Everett says that the cell phone providers are not adequately verifying low-income requirements and the one-phone-per-household rule.

While it’s true that fraud has been discovered in the Lifeline program, the FCC has already instituted strong measures to combat it. In Georgia’s case, there were over one million Obama phone recipients in 2011, but the FCC’s measures have reduced the number to about 740,000. Still, the state measure proceeded and obtained final approval in early October.

The cell phones are paid for and provided to the recipients by various telecommunications companies such as Safelink Wireless, Assurance Wireless and ReachOut Wireless, and the cost of the monthly service is subsidized by the FCC’s Lifeline Assistance program. The money for the subsidy comes from the Universal Service Fee charged in phone bills to paying landline and cell phone customers.

But the new $5 monthly charge is already being challenged by CTIA, the cell phone industry association that represents the vendors of these phones. In fact, the CTIA filed a lawsuit months ago when they heard of the potential new state measure.

The CTIA suit claims that the state of Georgia overstepping its authority by, in essence, setting cell phone rates thorugh the $5 fee. Senior vice-president and general counsel for CTIA said in a statement:

“CTIA will continue to challenge the Georgia Public Service Commission’s decision to set rates on wireless service, which would make Georgia’s consumers pay more than they do today”

Consumer advocacy groups are fighting back. Liz Coyle, spokeswoman for the non-profit Georgia Watch group said, “While we certainly recognize there are instances of fraud and abuse, we believe measures taken on the federal level to crack down on that are working.”

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