The proposal comes after Republicans killed a federal FCC program that provided a $30 discount off the broadband bills of low-income Americans. The Republicans in question claimed they killed the popular program to save money, but a follow up study showed that the program more than paid for itself (by a factor of four) because it helped expand access to remote healthcare, employment, and education.
My state fighting a good fight. We’re flawed, but we sometimes get it right.
It’s prohibitively difficult to establish municipal broadband. Much, if not all of the infrastructure used for internet in the US is privately owned.
Hundreds of billions of tax dollars were once given to these ISPs to establish fiber networks all over the land, and it’s still sparsely used outside of major cities-- in favor of milking older copper lines with cable/DSL for as long as possible. None of them are working on expanding access or improving infrastructure, simply because they don’t find it profitable to do so.
The ISPs have carved out their own little fiefdoms across counties and regions, and effectively act as a cartel with all of the steadily increasing prices and no actual competition in their territories.
The way it’s set up now, there has to be lengthy lawsuits and decades of legal teeth-pulling for the state to take it all back for public broadband. Aggressive ISP lobbying has made it all practically impossible with restrictive laws and outright bans. These little wins now are merely temporary concessions that the telecom mob will be certain to undo as soon as they inject another corporate shill into the government ranks.
I’m in a red state and they’ve pulled it off in a neighboring city. It’s can be done and has been done.