Comcast has also expanded the number of schools eligible for the Internet Essentials streamlined auto-enrolment process. All student families in schools where at least 50 percent of students are eligible for the National School Lunch Programme are now automatically eligible for Internet Essentials. In addition, the operator has launched a pilot programme for low-income seniors, the first of which will take place in Palm Beach County, Florida. The project is designed to better understand the challenges of helping low-income seniors cross the digital divide and learn how to use the internet. Only 25 percent of seniors with less than USD 30,000 of household income have broadband, compared to 82 percent of those with USD 75,000 or more, according to the Pew Research Center. In the four years since Internet Essentials was launched it has connected over 500,000 low-income families, or over 2 million people, to broadband internet.
