The best broadband in the US isn’t in New York or San Francisco. It’s in Chattanooga.

The best broadband in the US isn’t in New York or San Francisco. It’s in Chattanooga, Tennessee. And it’s owned by the city’s government—which makes it a shining case study for President Joe Biden’s push to have more municipal authorities build and run internet infrastructure. As part of his American Jobs Plan, President Biden wants to spend $100 billion on bringing affordable, high-speed broadband to everyone, and particularly to the 17% of rural American households who cannot get online at the government’s benchmark speeds. In a fact-sheet, the White House compared the indispensability of the internet today to that of electricity in 1936, when federal loans were disbursed to connect isolated pockets of America to the grid under a new Rural Electrification Act. The plan proposes a federal overturning of state laws that, in many parts of the US, prevent municipal bodies from being internet service providers. In 17 states, laws prohibit local governments from offering broadband services. (An 18th state, Washington, has repealed its laws but is waiting for the governor to sign the bill.) The barriers are a holdover from a time when Internet access was a near-luxury—a consumer product rather than a utility. That made it possible for Republican legislators and lobbying groups to argue that the government shouldn’t compete with the private sector, and that the only way to provide high-speed, affordable and widely available broadband is to leave the industry to companies.