To right-wingers, they are “Obamaphones,” government handouts for people who abuse taxpayer generosity by illegally hoarding the freebies and fraudulently exploiting the system for personal gain.

To the poor people who take advantage of Lifeline, the federal program that subsidizes phone service, its expansion in California to include free access to cellphones is an opportunity to communicate in a modern world the way most people do.

Lifeline has been providing discount landline phone service nationally to qualifying low-income people since 1985. The program was expanded in 2005 to offer pre-paid wireless plans to residents of participating states.

Last week, the California Public Utilities Commission (PUC) opted in to the wireless service and is now offering free cellphones with monthly plans that include 250 talk minutes and 250 text messages for free. An estimated 4.6 million California households could be eligible for the program. Most other states have already joined.

Lifeline is available to consumers with incomes below 135% of federal poverty guidelines (around $15,000 a year) or to those who participate in programs that include: Medicaid, food stamps, federal public housing assistance, Head Start and Supplemental Security Income (SSI). Consumers can receive either the wired or wireless benefits, but not both. Households are restricted to one Lifeline discount.

The program is administered by the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC) under the supervision of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Advocates for the homeless have been pushing the PUC to go wireless for at least three years, arguing that it would facilitate access to services like shelters, help in emergencies, remove impediments to government assistance and make it easier to hook up with potential employers.

The cellphones are available through Sprint’s Assurance Wireless and Nexus Communications’ Reach Out Wireless.

Bevan Dufty of the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness told the San Francisco Chronicle, “We are very excited by this. It will help people move forward.”

Writer Charles C. W. Cooke is also very excited. In an article for the conservative National Review, he describes Lifeline as “a corrupt and undesirable alliance between a quasi-governmental slush fund and a bunch of self-interested businesses that have nothing but perverse incentives to ensure its inexorable growth.”

He sees the wireless phones as yet another way that government has “tethered many even closer to the state.” More free goodies for the 47%.

–Ken Broder

To Learn More:

A Call out to Those in Need; Free Cellphones for California's Disadvantaged (by Kaci Poor, Eureka Times-Standard)

Lifeline Phone Service Goes Wireless (by Kevin Fagan, San Francisco Chronicle)

Lifeline Revisited (by Charles C.W. Cooke, National Review)

Free Cellphones Available for California Resident on SSI, Medicaid and Food Stamps (by Cynthia Hubert, Sacramento Bee)