For 30 years, the federal government has helped millions of low-income Americans pay their phone bills, saying that telephone service is critical to summoning medical help, seeking work and, ultimately, climbing out of poverty. Now, the nation’s top communications regulator will propose offering those same people subsidized access to broadband Internet.

Today, that regulator, Tom Wheeler, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, will circulate a plan to his fellow commissioners suggesting sweeping changes to a $1.7 billion subsidy program charged with ensuring that all Americans have affordable access to advanced telecommunications services, according to senior agency officials.

The effort is the FCC’s strongest recognition yet that high-speed Internet access is as essential to economic well-being as good transportation and telephone service. Wheeler will propose potentially giving recipients a choice between phone service, Internet service or a mix of both, the officials said. He will also suggest new measures to curb fraud, a source of criticism in recent years.

While the plan is likely to secure the support of the FCC’s Democratic majority in a vote next month, it is almost certain to also set off fierce debate in Washington. The subsidy program, Lifeline, has faced extensive scrutiny. And many of Wheeler’s previous actions, including his successful push to regulate broadband Internet as a public utility, have drawn partisan indignation.

More than 12 million households now participate in Lifeline, which was created in 1985 by the Reagan administration to subsidize landline telephone service. In 2008, the program was extended to cover the cost of mobile phones. Enrollment rose sharply — as did abuse, with some households receiving more than their single allowed subsidy. To qualify, a household must have an income at or below 135 percent of the federal poverty line, or must participate in a program like Medicaid or food stamps.

Gene Kimmelman, who lobbied as a consumer advocate to create Lifeline, said the program was meant to keep people from having to choose between essentials like food, electricity and phone service. Now, he said, Internet access needed to be added to the list.

“Broadband is every bit as important today as plain old phone service was 30 years ago,” said Kimmelman, a former Justice Department official who is now with Public Knowledge, a consumer advocacy group.

Wheeler’s proposal is an effort to bridge the so-called digital divide, the ever-widening economic and social inequalities of those with access to technology and those without it. In 2000, 3 percent of Americans had broadband at home, according to Pew Research. In 2013, 70 percent did. But the adoption of broadband in low-income and minority households has not kept pace.

According to Pew data from 2013, the most recent year for which numbers are available, 54 percent of those making less than $30,000 a year have broadband, compared with 88 percent of those making more than $75,000. The same survey found that 53 percent of Hispanics and 64 percent of blacks in the United States have high-speed Internet at home, compared with 74 percent of whites.