April 24, 2025
Updated Lifeline Income Qualifications for 2025
USAC has updated its forms, systems, and resources to reflect the 2025 Federal Poverty Guidelines which were released by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) earlier this year. Consumers qualify for the Lifeline benefit if their income is at or below 135 percent of the Federal Poverty Guidelines.
Service providers may review the following pages for more information:
Service providers should update their forms and systems as soon as possible to reflect this update. Providers operating in National Lifeline Accountability Database (NLAD) opt-out states (California, Oregon, and Texas) should follow their state’s guidance.
April 17, 2025
New Continued Eligibility Status Report in NLAD
On May 21, USAC will implement a new updated, streamlined, and unified Continued Eligibility Status Report in the National Lifeline Accountability Database (NLAD) production environment. Part of these changes include a new error code and updated description type. The new report will be available for service providers to test in the staging environment on April 23.
To support this enhancement, API parameters will be updated, but the API endpoint will remain unchanged.
Report Updates
New Error Code
INVALID_STATUS_PARAMETER_CE: The status must be one or all of the following values: confirmed, inprogress, deenrolled, all.
Updated Description for Continued Eligibility Type Error Code
INVALID_TYPE_PARAMETER_CE: The type must be one of the following values: addressUpdate, deceasedCheck, adhoc
API Parameters
The API parameters for the report have been updated to the following:
- sac – Optional, but one or more SACs can be provided. If no SAC is provided, results for all SACs assigned to that user will be returned in the report.
- ceType – Optional, but can be one or all of the following: addressupdate, deceasedcheck, adhoc. If no value is provided, then all ceTypes will be returned in the report.1.
- status – Optional, but can be one of the following: confirmed, inprogress, deenrolled, all. If no value is provided, all statuses will be returned in the report.
- continuedEligibilityStartDate – Optional, but if no date is provided all subscribers who have undergone and are undergoing continued eligibility will appear in the results.
Status
The report has been reduced to three statuses to show where a subscriber is in the continued eligibility process. These are shown in the “Continued Eligibility Status” field.
- Confirmed Eligibility – The subscriber successfully completed continued eligibility.
- In Progress – The subscriber is undergoing continued eligibility and must resolve an error on their application.
- If a subscriber de-enrolls or transfers while in this status, the subscriber will be removed from the report. If a subscriber is re-enrolled in NLAD after being de-enrolled they will no longer show on the report.
- De-enrolled – Eligibility Not Confirmed – The subscriber was de-enrolled for not completing/failing continued eligibility.
Report Fields
A summary of certain fields within the report is listed below:
Continued Eligibility Type: shows the specific continued eligibility process the subscriber is undergoing:
- Deceased Check
- Address Update
- Adhoc (initiated by USAC)
Continued Eligibility Start Date: the date that the continued eligibility application was created in the National Verifier.
Continued Eligibility Deadline Date: the date that the continued eligibility application expires. The subscriber must complete continued eligibility by this date to avoid being de-enrolled from the program.
Eligibility Resolution Required: shows if a subscriber will need to provide documentation to complete continued eligibility.
- If this field says “Yes”, the subscriber will need to provide eligibility documentation
- If this field says “No”, the subscriber is not required to provide eligibility documentation
The new Continued Eligibility Status Report will not show Safe Connections Act (SCA) subscribers undergoing continued eligibility. These subscribers will still be shown in the SCA Subscriber Status Report. For any questions related to the enhancement, please contact LifelineProgram@usac.org.
April 16, 2025
April Monthly Maintenance Reminder
Monthly System Maintenance, April 18
USAC will perform scheduled monthly maintenance starting Friday, April 18 from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. ET on Saturday, April 19.
The production environments of the following systems are impacted:
- National Verifier Portal
- National Verifier Carrier API
- National Lifeline Accountability Database (NLAD)
- Lifeline Claims System (LCS)
- Representative Accountability Database (RAD)
- Affordable Connectivity Claims System (ACCS)
Ad-hoc System Maintenance, April 24
USAC will also perform an ad-hoc system maintenance on Thursday, April 24, from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET.
The production environments of the following systems are impacted:
- National Verifier Portal
- National Verifier Carrier API
- National Lifeline Accountability Database (NLAD)
- Representative Accountability Database (RAD)
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
Note: All scheduled maintenance dates for NV and NLAD are available on the USAC website.
April 10, 2025
Scheduled Maintenance on USAC.org
USAC will perform scheduled maintenance on USAC.org on Thursday, April 17 from 9 p.m. – midnight. During this time, users may experience disruptions or outages when visiting USAC.org. We apologize for the inconvenience.
April 9, 2025
April System Notice
Ad-Hoc System Maintenance, April 11
USAC will perform an ad-hoc system maintenance on Friday, April 11 from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. ET.
The production environments for the below systems will be impacted:
- National Verifier Portal
- National Verifier Carrier API
Users will not be able to submit applications via the National Verifier Portal or National Verifier Carrier API. Additionally, NLAD functions that require the National Verifier will also be affected (e.g., enroll or transfer transactions).
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
Note: All scheduled maintenance dates for National Lifeline Accountability Database and National Verifier are available on the USAC website.
