Comcast’s Online Essentials: $ Service that is 10-a-Month for Families

Associated

• Comcast Rolls Out ten dollars Online Access for Low-Income FamiliesMashable
• Free mobile phones for the needy drawing both cheers and jeersPittsburgh Tribune-Review
• False “Cellular Phones Are Now Actually a Civil Right” Meme Travels Through Right-Wing MediaMedia Matters

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You may qualify for a new Internet service from Comcast, which costs just $9.95 a month if you live in an area served by Comcast and your kids receive free lunches at school through the National School Lunch Program.

Together with the needs above, to qualify for the specially reduced solution, dubbed Web Essentials, you need to additionally n’t have enrolled in a Comcast Internet hookup over the past ninety days, and also you should never have a comcast that is overdue or be hanging onto Comcast equipment that is said to be returned.

To join up for the solution, call Comcast (1-855-846-8376) and ask for an application delivered within the mail. Web basics is likely to be available you start with the 2011-2012 college 12 months, it’ll be accessible for signups on the next three college years, also it’s guaranteed to stay coming in at $9.95 each month provided that the customer has a young child getting lunch that is free college and does not shut or break the regards to the Comcast account. Comcast can also be offering laptop computers to qualified families at a reduced price of $149.95, and it is offering free Web training on top of that, all an element of the initiative that is new.

How come Comcast being therefore good? The description it is distributing is in fact this:

We should bring the charged energy for the online to more pupils and families in the united states.

That’s an idea that is nice. But Comcast additionally would like to have the okay for NBC-Universal, and the Internet Essentials program to its merger assists that cause, as Mashable explains:

While this task may seem like a goodwill effort on an element of the giant communications provider, it is in reality a by-product associated with the Comcast-NBC merger, where the business consented to “increase broadband implementation in low income households” as you of a number of conditions to your purchase.

Not absolutely all income that is“low” are qualified, however. As much commenters have actually reported at web web sites such as the Consumerist, to qualify for Web Essentials, you mustn’t simply be bad but additionally have actually young ones. Low-income childless partners, singles, while the senior are left out.

But bad residents who can’t subscribe to cheap online sites may nevertheless be entitled to free mobile phones—free moments too.

The other day, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review stated that two businesses, Assurance Wireless and SafeLink Wireless, give free cell phones towards the bad throughout all of the nation. Just how do these programs work? Well, have you ever noticed a fee that is curious “Universal provider Fund” in your cellular phone bill? The cash collected helps cover the expense of phone solution in libraries, schools, and several areas that are rural. It will pay for mobile phones and minutes that are free bad residents that are entitled to programs like Medicaid or meals stamps.

The free cellular phone programs have been in existence for a long time, nevertheless the Tribune-Review story kicked down a firestorm of media coverage—particularly because of the right, decrying the idea that “cell phones are actually a civil right.”

Brad Tuttle is really a reporter at TIME. Find him on Twitter at @bradrtuttle. You’ll be able to carry on the conversation on TIME’s Twitter web web page as well as on Twitter at @TIME.

Brad Tuttle @bradrtuttle

Brad Tuttle covers business and individual finance for TIME. He lives in Massachusetts together with his spouse and four sons, and additionally shows journalism at UMass-Amherst.