Introduction

Welcome to the Massachusetts Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) Explorer, last updated with data current as of November 19, 2023.

This dashboard project uses publicly available data to explore the status of ACP enrollments in Massachusetts. Head on over to the About page to get more information about the inception of this project and its creator, Marina Levy! Also, after you look around, make sure to check out the Technical Appendix for information about how the data was obtained and processed. Don’t forget to get in touch if you have comments, suggestions, requests, or want to collaborate.

Map Overview of Participation Rates by State

Table Ranking of ACP Participation Rate by State

Massachusetts Monthly ACP Enrollments

Massachusetts Enrollment by Method of Verification

Breakdown of Federal ACP Funding in Massachusetts by Month and Provider (FY2023 & FY2024 - Up to November 19, 2023)

FY 2023 & 2024 ACP Funding Recipients for Massachusetts (As of November 19, 2023)

Download

A link will soon be added to allow for direct download of the processed data used to generate these visualizations

Map of 351 Massachusetts Municipalities, by ACP Enrollment Rate (Based on MA Dept. of Transitional Assistance Cases)

Table Breakdown of 351 Massachusetts Municipalities, by ACP Enrollment Rate (includes Historical Data)

Download

A link will soon be added to allow for direct download of the processed data used to generate these visualizations

Map of Massachusetts Zip Code Tabulation Areas (ZCTAs), by ACP Enrollment Rate (Based on MA Dept. of Transitional Assistance Cases)

Table Breakdown of Massachusetts Zip Codes, by ACP Enrollment Rate (includes Historical Data)

Download

A link will soon be added to allow for direct download of the processed data used to generate these visualizations

About the Massachusetts ACP Explorer

Per the FCC:

The Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) is an FCC benefit program that helps ensure that households can afford the broadband they need for work, school, healthcare and more. The benefit provides a discount of up to $30 per month toward internet service for eligible households and up to $75 per month for households on qualifying Tribal lands. Eligible households can also receive a one-time discount of up to $100 to purchase a laptop, desktop computer, or tablet from participating providers if they contribute more than $10 and less than $50 toward the purchase price. The Affordable Connectivity Program is limited to one monthly service discount and one device discount per household.

If you’re interested in enrolling in ACP or learning more about whether you qualify to receive the discount, please visit https://www.affordableconnectivity.gov/. Or if you live in Massachusetts, feel free to contact the Massachusetts Department of Telecommunications and Cable’s Consumer Hotline ( 800-392-6066) for more information and for help applying to the program.

This is a dashboard meant to help track ACP enrollments in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It was created for two purposes:

1. To fulfill my Capstone graduation requirement for my Master’s in Data Analytics and Computational Social Science (DACSS) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst

2. To share my understanding of which data sources are currently available to the public in relation to the Affordable Connectivity Program

Unfortunately, there isn’t enough public data to truly understand the health of the ACP or its performance in any state or town. This is because we’re missing critical information about:

• Which providers are serving subscribers in Massachusetts, and what sort of plans ACP households are subscribing to

• What type of service subscribers are getting

• How subscribers are claiming eligibility through the National Verifier

This type of information matters a lot. We can’t know if the program is doing what it was intended to do—to help ensure that households can afford the broadband they need for work, school, healthcare and more—if we can’t monitor whether households are being steered to any particular sort of plans or services.

Are households paying anything over the $30 covered by the ACP? If so… should they be? Say, if a provider has a $30 plan that would cost the household $0 after ACP benefits, but the household is enrolled in a $100 plan that costs them $70 after ACP benefits, that’s worth knowing about. Maybe it was the right choice for that household. Or maybe the household was upsold on a plan, offering things the household doesn’t need. Maybe some providers are more unscrupulous than others when it comes to this program. No way to know that right now, because the FCC will not release this type of data to the public.

And then there’s the issue of types of service. Why does this matter? Well, because not all “broadband” is created equal.

We all understand that there is a fundamental difference between browsing the internet on your phone, as opposed to on a computer or tablet. Cell phones aren’t the ideal means for taking an online course, or preparing a work presentation, or applying to jobs. And the kind of “internet” you pay to receive on your phone-- known as “mobile broadband”-- isn’t generally as fast, as reliable, or as… permanent as “fixed broadband” (the kind you get through a monthly subscription to an Internet Service Provider, where you use a modem and often a router). “Mobile data” usually comes with caps and speed throttles after you’ve used “too much.” This usually isn’t the case with fixed broadband.

Good thing the ACP is supposed to help promote the best kind of broadband access you can get in your location! And we know that’s not mobile broadband, because the ACP will offer discounts to households to purchase a laptop, a desktop computer, or a tablet… but not a cell phone. That’s not what this is supposed to be about (even if the line between tablets and cell phones is awkwardly tenuous). And yet, we’re not allowed to see what kinds of service people are getting under this program.

USAC does share nationwide information about this: over half (53.4% as of April 1, 2023) of ACP subscribers are receiving Mobile Broadband.

We can’t know if this makes any sense for Massachusetts customers with national data. We can’t know if people understand what their service options are, or if there even are other service options available to them, with highly aggregated national data. In short, we can’t know how well this program is serving Massachusetts subscribers. Nor can we really understand if there are any groups of people who could benefit from ACP but who are undersubscribed relative to others, because we don’t know how people are qualifying for the program in Massachusetts. Is it through their Pell Grants? Is it through SNAP? Is it through income qualification? Who knows!

But here’s what we do know:

We know how many people are enrolled in the state, and that information is provided at the zip code level (sidenote: I highly recommend reading this article, titled Stop Using Zip Codes for Geospatial Analysis, to understand why zip-level data isn’t great. We’d be much better off receiving Census Block-level, Block Group-level, or even Tract-level data instead).

We know what method of verification households use to enroll in ACP (National Verifier, Lifeline, through a school, or Alternative Verification through a provider).

And we know, roughly, how this information changes over time (although, fair warning: USAC will go back and edit past entries with new numbers without leaving any trace that anything got changed, so what we understand to have happened in, say, February of 2022, may change next month).

While USAC does not give us provider-level information the way it does for Lifeline data,,) we can make very general guesstimates about who the big players in Massachusetts are thanks to federal government spending data, which shows us how much money providers are receiving for claiming to serve ACP subscribers in each state separately. 

So using what we do know, I’ve created this dashboard. Raw subscriber numbers don’t mean much, however, and it’s preferable to be able to compare our numbers to something. For Lifeline, USAC publishes its own estimation of how many people are eligible for the program based on a number of Census metrics. This is helpful to estimate the program participation rate.

For ACP, no such file is published, so people are generating their best guesses of the ACP eligible population on their own. The Institute for Local Self-Reliance has created their own dashboard and shared their methodology.

I opted for a simpler method that is likely less accurate (it’s underinclusive) but possibly more actionable for communities. I’m using monthly figures reported by the Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance for total cases served in an area. My thought is that if we base our denominator on people that the Commonwealth already knows exist and are receiving help through the state, it’s easier to identify households that would likely qualify for this federal program and to make that connection happen locally.

But I don’t have DTA-equivalent information for all other states in the US, so in order to assess how Massachusetts as a whole compares to the rest of the country, I’m using Lifeline eligibility. It’s a USAC-vetted measure which, again, is underinclusive (Lifeline eligibility is stricter than ACP eligibility), but (hopefully) consistent across states.

About Me

My name is Marina Levy. As mentioned above, one of the reasons I created this dashboard relates to the requirements for my Master’s Degree. So I’m including a fancy UMass logo to remind folks that this is primarily an academic project. I have a B.A from Suffolk University with a double major in Government and Legal Studies, and soon I’ll have an M.S in Data Analytics and Computational Social Science.

The idea for the dashboard came to me because I’ve been reading a lot about the ACP as part of my former job as a Data Analyst at the Massachusetts Department of Telecommunications and Cable (DTC). Thanks to the DTC, I’ve learned a lot about access to broadband and the role of government in ensuring universal service. I’m a strong supporter of digital equity initiatives and a huge proponent of gathering more and better data to help communities make informed, timely decisions (not just about broadband, but about everything else too!). Right now, we have a dearth of reliable, granular, timely data on broadband availability, affordability, and service quality which makes it hard to know what to do and where to do it. But for all the limitations I talked about, I do hope this dashboard can help someone understand the ACP in Massachusetts a little better.

I’m originally from Argentina, but I’ve been calling the US my home for over ten years. When I’m not ranting about broadband, I like to spend my time bookmarking online courses (that I tell myself I’ll get around to soon), eating chicken nuggets, and traveling around with my partner. I’m also a big fan of Costco and the frozen meatballs you can buy at Ikea.

Get in Touch

My email is marinaslevy at gmail dot com. If you found the dashboard useful, or would like to see a different cut of data, or found an error in a calculation, or really anything in between, I’d love for you to get in touch.