Marco Rubio and Other Senators Move To Block Municipal Broadband (theintercept.com)

New submitter h33t l4x0r writes: Presidential candidate Marco Rubio recently "fired off a letter (PDF) to the Federal Communications Commission asking the agency to allow states to block municipal broadband services." The municipal services offer cheaper, faster broadband alternatives to the large telecoms. Rubio's campaign has taken large donations from AT&T, and the article notes that other providers, "fearing competition, have used their influence in state government to make an end-run around local municipalities. Through surrogates like the American Legislative Exchange Council, the industry gets states to pass laws that ban municipal broadband networks, despite the obvious benefits to both the municipalities and their residents."

Comments

Re:Private sector will always do it better.

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

We need to be stopping the relentless growth of big government, not find more things for them to get their paws into.

Rand Paul, is that you?

Re:For someone who represents the people

[DarkOx]

I think you are over looking the potential for municipal broadband to choke change and growth. Say what you will about Comcast and friends but we have things like 100Mbps down 75Mpbs up links at affordable prices. Compare that to what you could get in your home a decade ago. Now think about how fast your local municipality does changes anything. Consider the article about Flit Michigan's water system the other day. The issue was really not the water source but the infrastructure. How many places have over crowed schools, etc?

I am sure public broadband systems could deliver today's technology to consumers more cheaply and better serve under served areas, but the cost would likely be that the level of service rarely improves. If the municipality gets it wrong about population projections etc, it might end up with a radically under or over capacity system and the issues that causes might take a decade to fix.

One thing is true people almost always choose cheap. If you allow municipal broad band it will choke out terrestrial ISPs. The broad band market is broken because there is to little competition, plan to effectively make it so the government is the only game in town isn't a solution to that.