Municipal Networks

Tennessee's Knoxville Utilities Board (KUB) has the green light to provide a public fiber broadband network to its customers. It will be a years-long process to provide 1-gigabit, symmetrical fiber internet service to every customer in KUB's electrical footprint; that's approximately 210,000 households in mostly Knox, Grainger and Union counties. According to KUB's proposal, service would start at about $65 a month and could begin as early as 2022. Service would extend to all of KUB's territory by 2029.

The all-out push in Congress to pass a historic infrastructure bill offers an unprecedented opportunity to bring high-speed internet to unconnected rural areas. It’s a watershed moment for rural America, one that could turbocharge economic development and help reverse long-standing health and education challenges.

After coming close to imposing a near-total ban on municipal broadband networks, Ohio's Republican-controlled legislature has dropped the proposed law in final negotiations over the state budget. Lawmakers apparently relented to public pressure from supporters of municipal broadband and cities and towns that operate the networks. People and businesses from Fairlawn, OH where the city-run FairlawnGig network offers fiber Internet, played a significant role in the protests. FairlawnGig itself asked users to put pressure on lawmakers, and the subscribers did so in great numbers.

President Joe Biden announced a $65 billion broadband-deployment deal with Senate Republicans and Democrats, but he provided no details on whether the plan will prioritize municipal broadband networks as he originally proposed. Congressional Republicans have tried to ban municipal broadband nationwide, so it's highly unlikely that they would have agreed to Biden's stated goal of giving public networks priority over private broadband providers in the next big ro

More than 30 million Americans live in areas where the internet infrastructure simply isn’t there. This disproportionately affects rural and tribal areas because it’s just too expensive for private companies to install the wiring. The farther homes are spread apart, the lower the return on investment. So some cities and counties across the country have decided to build broadband as a utility for residents, just like water or power. Residents in Wilson County have some of the best internet in the nation.

The pandemic made it clearer than ever how much we depend on a fast, reliable broadband. But getting online for millions of Americans is too costly and in many cases the service is inadequate. Robust competition creates scrutiny and accountability that can prevent big telecommunications companies from expanding data cap limits when people are more dependent than ever on an internet connection. Even during the pandemic, Comcast and other internet service providers still enforce these data caps in markets where they face little or no competition.

Public officials in Ohio fear that language in the state's proposed $75 billion budget could put municipal broadband internet services out of business. The language, which appears aimed at protecting private broadband providers, was inserted without prior public discussion during recent Ohio Senate deliberations on the state's two-year budget. Local officials say this would endanger planned upgrades to public safety services, improved school and library services, plus business and economic development tools.

For decades, policymakers in Washington and state capitals have fretted about the patchwork of broadband access in the United States, which has held back economic development in underserved areas and became a major problem during the pandemic. Now, after years of federal subsidies that have improved but not solved the problem, the Biden administration is proposing to spend $100 billion over the next eight years to finally connect every American household to high-speed internet. But solving the problem isn’t just a matter of cutting a big check to fund the installation of fiber pipelines.

Historically, the government has subsidized the building of broadband networks by offering incentives to private companies such as Verizon, Comcast and AT&T. But in a break from the past, Biden's proposal calls for prioritizing funding, for the first time, to community-built networks. And the plan isn't just focused on building out broadband in rural or outlying areas. Some of the most persistent examples of the digital divide can be found in dense urban neighborhoods struggling with poverty or inequality.

At a time when people can work remotely and run businesses from practically anywhere, the internet should be a boon to the rural economy. Not only could it keep Wisconsin's signature farming industry connected, it could help curb population losses in small towns, where many young people feel they must leave for opportunities elsewhere. Yet a significant portion of rural Wisconsin — if it has access to the internet at all — lacks access at broadband speeds, meaning a connection of at least 25 megabit per second downloads and 3 Mbps uploads.