Library Groups Mobilize Against FCC Proposal to Reshape E-Rate

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.

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