Washington
- With Internet providers ranking near the bottom of customer satisfaction
surveys, seven-in-ten Americans say their towns or communities should be allowed
to build new Internet networks that compete with large, established providers,
according to new data from the Pew Research Centre.
The latest findings add to a long-running battle over
restrictions , often written by state legislatures and supported by telecom and
cable companies - that prevent local governments from establishing home-grown
rivals to ISPs such as AT&T or Charter and policy analysts say, the
results underscore a gulf in attitudes about public infrastructure spending -
though perhaps not the kind you may expect.
Substantial majorities of Democrats and Republicans back the
ability of towns to build and sell their own Internet plans to local residents,
according to the study.
Although conservatives are slightly more likely than
liberals to say they are a bad idea, just 27 percent of Americans overall say
local governments shouldn't be able to offer competing service, Pew's survey
found. (The same study found that Americans largely oppose government subsidies
for low-income Internet users, which is timely in light of a recent government
decision.)
Proponents of independent Internet networks argue that a
“public option” for Internet access could help drive down the price of
broadband and increase speeds. Opponents say the expense of building new
networks represents an unacceptable financial risk for many local governments.
"Municipal broadband networks too often end up failing
and costing taxpayers millions," said US Telecom, a trade association
representing Internet providers and telecom companies. Some public projects
have resulted in high-profile failures.
In 2009, residents of Burlington,
Vermont, learned that its mayor
at the time, Bob Kiss, quietly used $17 million in city funds to prop up the
local public broadband utility, Burlington Telecom. The utility is now in the
process of being auctioned off as part of a negotiated settlement. Delays and
cost overruns were also a feature of a public-sector broadband project in Utah.
Read also: Telkom 'piggybacks' Vumatel fibre
But the movement to build public broadband has also led to successes.
Long before Google Fibber came on the scene and began challenging incumbent
ISPs, the city of Chattanooga, Tennessee, was competing aggressively with
offers of downloads speeds up to 1 gigabit per second. In 2013, the city
dropped its prices from $300 a month to $70 - and in 2015 opened up a new
service tier of 10 Gbps.
After relying primarily on bond money and declining to fund
the project with a new city tax, Chattanooga turned its
fibber network into what its manager has called a "great profit
centre."
Where they are allowed to, other towns have increasingly
moved to build their own independent networks. For example, the government of Colorado Springs, Colorado,
recently became the 100th jurisdiction in the state to vote to overcome the Colorado legislature's restrictions on municipal
broadband, said Christopher Mitchell, a public broadband advocate at the
Institute for Local Self-Reliance in Minneapolis.
"In Colorado, we see
liberal cities like Boulder, conservative cities
like Colorado Springs,
and many conservative counties putting, in some sense, their money where their
mouth is," said Mitchell.
While Colorado
law allows cities and towns to move forward with municipal broadband if enough
residents vote to approve it, other states can be more restrictive. Chattanooga became part of a high-profile legal battle in
2015, when it asked the federal government to help it overcome restrictions put
in place by Tennessee's
legislature.
Under those rules, the city's Internet network was not
allowed to grow to serve neighbouring customers. Regulators at the Federal
Communications Commission voted to supersede the state regulation, but a year
later they were defeated when a federal court ruled the move unconstitutional.
Lawmakers in Congress lined up for and against the Federal
Communications Commission’s initial vote on a partisan basis, with Democrats
siding with Chattanooga
and Republicans siding against it. But the picture is different at the local
level, where few partisan divisions exist over the issue, said Mitchell.
"The most striking thing is how out of touch
Republicans in Washington, DC are from their base," he said.
"I talk to Republicans at the local level regularly, especially in rural
communities - and they all realise they need the public option."
WASHINGTON
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