Library Groups Mobilize Against FCC Proposal to Reshape E-Rate
Thursday’s FCC E-Rate inquiry would raise compliance burdens for consultants, participants, and providers, librarians said in interviews
WASHINGTON, June 27, 2026 – Librarians and their allies are speaking up about how worried they are about the Federal Communications Commission’s efforts to target E-Rate.
In interviews with Broadband Breakfast, these officials said the agency’s inquiry could disrupt a system – the $2.4 billion subsidy program for schools and libraries – that they describe as working well.
And Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., regarded by many as the author of the original E-Rate program established by the 1996 Telecom Act, blasted the FCC’s Thursday vote to reopen key aspects of E-Rate policy.
“Today’s FCC vote is a deeply troubling step toward weakening E-Rate, a universal program that has connected millions of students, teachers, schools, and libraries — in urban and rural communities alike — to the internet for 30 years,” Markey said Thursday in a release.
