As part of an effort to narrow the gap in the digital divide, AT&T recently announced that it will provide a free internet option for eligible households in the area including the Odessa-Midland area.
The program is part of the new federal benefit to help with internet cost.
“This is something that I’m extremely excited about,” Lead Product Marketing Manager April Ramos said. “I’m a west Texas native so I understand the need for speed so to speak out there. What it is, it’s the affordable connectivity program. We call it ACP. It’s a benefit that essentially anyone can utilize. There is a qualification that you can go through.”
How it works, as detailed in a press release, is that AT&T combined a new access from AT&T plan with the recently announced federal benefits from the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) to bring the cost of internet down to $0 for eligible families.
The release said that the ACP lowers the cost of internet service by $30 per month which makes the new $30 access from AT&T Prepaid or Cricket Wireless service as well as other AT&T internet plans.
All households that qualify for ACP will also qualify for access from AT&T.
“It’s a national verifier that you can go through on our website,” Ramos said.
People can do that by visiting acpbenefit.org to learn more and apply for ACP through the federal government.
“It’s the federal government’s national verifier,” Ramos said. “You go to acpbenefit.org. When you go there, what you’re going to do there is fill out the different logistics questions that it’s got. It’s a pretty simple process. It is home internet services for our low-income customers so they validate that through that process.”
“What they do is call us at 855-220-5211 and then we go in and see that ACP approval and then we can move forward with setting them up on that plan with the ACP benefit. What that looks like for a customer, they’re going to have the AT&T Access so a hundred megabytes speed of service within their homes. That new plan is $30 but they’ll see a $30/month credit. I will tell you that we have customers that have their original access plan from AT&T and they may have speeds up to 10 megabytes speed for their household or they may not have a higher speed available. Not to worry, they can still take advantage of that and that internet costs between $5-$10 a month, depending on what speed they’re on and those qualifications.”
While Ramos talked about bridging the digital divide in the Odessa-Midland area, she said this program is broader than this particular area.
“This is an area that’s important to us because we want to make sure there’s coverage out there so this one covers the Odessa-Midland area. Just to give more details about that. It’s a $14 billion program that the federal government has helped to create as far as the infrastructure and jobs act. That launched on December 31 so these are steps that we’re taking to move forward with that particular plan and they’re providing that $30 a month benefit to eligible households. They can choose to apply that $30 a month to their AT&T prepaid plans or cricket wireless as well as the ATT services plan. So it encompasses a few different benefits. It’s a one per-household but essentially, they can utilize it within any of those three areas.”
Ramos talked about how this program is designed to help those in the lower income bracket.
“I think the biggest thing was how do we go in and bridge the digital divide?” Ramos said. “We wanted to make sure that low income customers had access to internet in their homes and then you think about what people need to do at school levels and work and things like that. So that was the main premise of this program and really just a way to allow them to have high speed internet. So I think that’s the big picture as far as what this looks like.”
