Here at ILSR we’re no stranger to telecom monopoly-backed efforts to mislead the public about the significant benefits of community owned broadband access.

That’s why a new “study” by the industry-backed Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) maligning municipal broadband doesn’t come as much of a surprise.

The study professes to take a look at a very small number of municipal broadband networks, then makes sweeping and patently false claims about the entire sector.

“In most cases, local governments have neither the competence nor the economies of scale to deliver broadband as well as private ISPs,” the study concludes. “So, favoring government-owned networks wastes societal resources, creates unfair competition, and is frequently unsustainable in the long run.”

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There’s numerous problems here. One being that the survey only looked at 20 municipal broadband networks in a country where more than 450 community broadband networks – serving close to 800 different communities – now pepper the American landscape.

The study author acknowledges the study’s sample size was “too small for the data to represent all U.S. [government-owned broadband networks] reliably,” then proceeds to make broad sweeping assumptions unsupported by any actual evidence.

A recent U.S. News And World Report survey of U.S. broadband subscribers shows that Americans are increasingly paying more money for broadband access.

The survey also indicates broad public support for the recently defunded Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), and other government-backed efforts to cap soaring broadband subscription costs.

The organization surveyed 2,500 adults from the country’s five most populous states; 500 broadband subscribers each in California, Texas, Florida, New York, and Pennsylvania.

Not too surprisingly, the survey found that consumers consistently are paying more for broadband than the advertised price, either thanks to steady rate hikes, or the broad use of often sneaky, hidden fees to jack up the advertised cost of service.

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Most Americans remain trapped under a monopoly or duopoly for next-generation broadband (broadband defined as faster than 100/20 megabits per second, or Mbps) access. This lack of competition results in high prices, slow speeds, spotty access, substandard customer service, and an increased occurrence of net neutrality, privacy, or other anti-consumer violations.

The survey found the average U.S. subscriber bill at sign up is now $81 – up from the $77 average monthly price seen in the outlet’s April 2024 survey report. But the average broadband subscription cost when the bill actually arrives was now $98 per month; up from $89 just six months earlier. For most, $100 broadband access is right around the corner.

As the federal government makes unprecedented investments to expand high-speed access to the Internet, unbeknownst to most outside the broadband industry is that nearly a third of the states in the U.S. have preemption laws in place that either prevent or restrict local municipalities from building and operating publicly-owned, locally-controlled networks.

Currently, there are 16 states across the U.S. (listed below) with these monopoly-protecting, anti-competition preemption laws in place.

These states maintain these laws, despite the fact that wherever municipal broadband networks or other forms of community-owned networks operate, the service they deliver residents and businesses almost always offers faster connection speeds, more reliable service, and lower prices.

In numerous cases, municipal broadband networks are able to provide low-cost or free service to low-income households even in the absence of the now expired federal Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP). And for several years in a row now, municipal networks consistently rank higher in terms of consumer satisfaction and performance in comparison to the big monopoly Internet service providers, as PCMag and Consumer Reports have documented time and time again.

Nevertheless, these preemption laws remain in 16 states, enacted at the behest of Big Cable and Telecom lobbyists, many of whom have ghost written the statutes, in an effort to protect ISP monopolies from competition.

The Infrastructure Law Was Supposed to Move the Preemption Needle But …

The Maine Connectivity Authority (MCA), Maine’s quasi-governmental public agency in charge of broadband expansion and digital equity, is seeking proposals to help design and construct a major 536-mile fiber network that should dramatically improve affordable fiber access across vast swaths of the Pine Tree State.

For several years Maine officials have proposed spending $53 million to build a major middle mile fiber network known as the Maine Online Optical Statewide Enabling Network (MOOSE Net).

The middle mile network would extend fiber into numerous underserved Maine communities, boosting broadband competition and access while hopefully lowering prices.

Last year, Maine received a $30 million grant to help fund the network’s construction, courtesy of the National Telecommunications Information Administration’s (NTIA) $980 million Enabling Middle Mile Broadband Infrastructure Program. The MCA’s proposal was one of just 32 proposals selected out of 260 applicants for federal broadband funding.

Consumer Reports’ latest survey of the most popular ISPs in America is once again dominated by smaller providers and community-owned and operated broadband networks.

The magazine’s semi-paywalled report measured the opinions of 48,000 readers on a 100 point scale across four criteria: value for money, connection reliability, customer service, and speed.

The top ranked (95 points) ISP in the nation according to Consumer Reports was Greenlight, a small fiber operator that deploys largely around upstate New York. The second (92) was EPB, the community-owned fiber network in Chattanooga, Tennessee whose deployment has helped the city envision an estimated $2.69 billion return on its initial investment.

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At the same time, regional monopolies that benefit from muted competition and oversight continued to fare poorly in the magazine’s rankings.

Expensive and usage-capped satellite broadband services fared the worst (HughesNet (14) and Viasat (14)), followed by a peppering of regional cable and telco monopolies like Comcast Xfinity (28), CenturyLink/Lumen (25), Mediacom’s Xtream (25), or Altice’s Optimum (20).

With a 3-2 vote along partisan lines, the FCC has restored both net neutrality–and its Title II authority over Internet access providers. It’s just the latest chapter in a multi-decade quest to try and prevent national telecom monopolies from abusing their market power to undermine competitors while nickel and diming American consumers.

“Consumers have made clear to us they do not want their broadband provider cutting sweetheart deals, with fast lanes for some services and slow lanes for others,” FCC boss Jessica Rosenwocel said in a statement.

“They do not want their providers engaging in blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization. And if they have problems they expect the Nation’s expert authority on communications to be able to respond,” Rosenwocel added.

Smaller ISPs and municipalities worry that the new rules saddle them with burdensome regulations as a punishment for the sins of much larger companies. But the FCC, state leaders, and consumer groups insist the rules should be a net benefit all the same.

The final rules require that ISPs be transparent about any restrictions on consumer broadband lines. They also prohibit ISPs from extorting content and service companies looking to maintain high-quality performance on telecom networks, and prohibit telecoms from undermining online competition by creating pay-to-play “fast lanes.”

In a recently published piece in The American Prospect, Sean Gonsalves, ILSR's Community Broadband Networks Initiative Associate Director for Communications, reports on four cities across the U.S. that are well prepared to deal with the demise of the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP).  

The article – titled "The Municipal Broadband Solution" – begins by laying out why Congress created the popular program and how letting the ACP go bankrupt undermines the national "Internet For All" Initiative now underway. However, while digital equity advocates across the nation rightly lament the demise of the program, the focus of the article is on cities that have figured out how to deliver afforable high-quality Internet access even without the ACP.   

Here's a few excerpts:

Congress created the ACP to soften a harsh reality: Americans pay among the highest prices for broadband of any developed nation in the world, leaving tens of millions unable to afford internet service—something experts have long noted is a telltale sign of a broken market dominated by monopoly providers, and is at the very heart of why the U.S. digital divide is as massive as it is.

However, although federal lawmakers have known for over a year that the fund would be bankrupt by this spring, GOP congressional leaders have not budged on even bipartisan attempts to save the ACP, prompting the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to announce in January that the agency was being forced to wind down the popular program.

It’s a major setback for the “Internet for All” effort, especially in light of a recent FCC survey that found 29 percent of ACP beneficiaries would be left without any home internet service whatsoever without the benefit, in an age when internet connectivity is a necessity for meaningful participation in 21st-century society.

The American Prospect recently published an analysis – "How Monopolies and Maps Are Killing ‘Internet for All’" – authored by our own Sean Gonsalves that lays out why the federally-backed “Internet For All” initiative will likely fall short of its aspirational goals.

It begins with facts-on-the-ground reporting about the estimated 37,000 households that do not have high-quality access to the Internet in Oakland, California and how cities across the nation are plagued with similar challenges – challenges many digital advocates say is “digital redlining.”

Here's a few excerpts:

“It would be reasonable to think the Biden administration’s $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law, passed by Congress in November 2021, would change all of this. A significant part of the law devotes $65 billion to a moon shot mission, involving all 50 states and U.S. territories, to bridge the digital divide once and for all. It includes funding to build new modern networks, and other programs to address barriers to broadband adoption, like the Affordable Connectivity Program, which helps eligible low-income households pay for pricey internet bills, as well as initiatives that offer digital skills training and a mandate for the FCC to adopt rules ‘to prevent and eliminate digital discrimination.’”

“Similar to when the federal government set out to bring electricity to every household in America a century ago, the Biden administration intends to do the same with broadband, labeling this historic investment the ‘Internet for All’ initiative.”

“But what hasn’t dawned on most federal and state lawmakers—or at least, it has not been admitted publicly—is that the trajectory we are on will not lead to Internet for All, but something more like Internet for Some.”

You can read the entire story on the American Prospect website here.