Ukhaneva contributes to MMTC white paper: “A Lifeline to High-Speed Internet Access: An Economic Analysis of Administration Costs and the Impact on Consumers”

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The Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council  (MMTC) has released a White Paper titled “A Lifeline to High-Speed Internet Access: An Economic Analysis of Administration Costs and the Impact on Consumers,” which focuses on the Lifeline program’s current structure and reveals inefficiencies of the current design that result in excessive administrative costs to the eligible telecommunications carriers (ETCs). The paper argues that program processes for eligibility verification and program administration can be streamlined through the shift of administrative functions from the ETCs to a more centralized government process. Such reform, according to the paper analysis, can benefit consumers and significantly reduce the program administrative costs. The paper was commissioned by MMTC with economic analysis provided by Dr. Coleman Bazelon from The Brattle Group and Dr. Olga Ukhaneva from the Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy. Dr. Nicol Turner-Lee, MMTC’s Vice President and Chief Research and Policy Officer was the Senior Researcher along with Devan Hankerson, MMTC’s Research Director.

MMTC is a non-partisan, national nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting and preserving equal opportunity and civil rights in the mass media, telecommunications and broadband industries, and closing the digital divide. MMTC is generally recognized as the nation’s leading advocate for minority advancement in communications.