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Imagine for a moment what your life would be like without a phone, corded or wireless. How would you contact emergency services if there was a fire or a serious injury? How would you contact a potential new employer, or keep in touch with a current one? How would you contact your utility company about a power outage, or a doctor about your sick child? How would you keep in touch with your loved ones and your community? In this day and age, telecommunications services are a real necessity, and not being able to afford them is a real liability. Those types of questions prompted the Federal Communication Commission to implement the Lifeline benefit program for income-eligible consumers in 1984. That program had two parts: Lifeline Assistance, which provided discounts on basic monthly landline telephone service at the primary residence of qualified telephone subscribers, and Lifeline Link-Up, which provided discounts on the initial installation fee for landline telephone service at the primary residence of qualified telephone subscribers. As cell phone usage has increased and cell phone service fees have dropped, the Lifeline program has been expanded to include wireless technology. Prepaid cell phone companies have spun off government-approved subsidiaries (such as Safelink Wireless, Assurance Wireless, and Reachout Wireless) to specialize in providing Lifelife-covered telephone services to qualifying participants: Examples: From that basic framework, rumors like the ones encapsulated in the Examples cited above have circulated, claiming that the Obama administration created a program to give free cell phones paid for by taxpayer money to welfare recipients. All the elements of such statements are erroneous or exaggerated:
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