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.

[MrSome]

Socialize? I guess we should get rid of roads, police, military then... because by your definition, anything that the public requests of their government, and then pays for... is "socialist".

We need to be stopping the relentless growth of big corporations and monopolies, not giving them more power & money to control politics.

Municipal ISP is un American.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The real American tradition is for the municipalities to tax the local citizens and give that money to large private companies to build "infrastructure" that will bring great economic growth to the communities. That is how the canal companies got their money those days. George Washington lobbied the federal government to fund a canal through the Cumberland Gap to connect the Mon valley to the Chesapeake Bay. His group of "investors" had claimed square miles of land in the Mon valley hoping to make a killing once the canal got built. That canal was never built but many other canals, notably the Erie Canal, was built by local taxes given to canal barons.

Then came the railroads. The canal companies lobbied heavily to keep railroads out of the canal towns. Even today you can see quaint little towns along the Erie canal that successfully kept the railroads out. They, and their canals, went bust and economic growth by passed them. But municipalities courted the railroads like gangbusters. All levels of the government local, state and federal shoveled money to private companies to build railroads, large land grants. So much of land was given to railroads they actually acted as a catalyst to immigration and populating the Great Plains. They gave away 40 acres of land to immigrants from Europe if they would buy train tickets from New York to Nebraska! Well, history repeated. Railway towns like Altoona, PA actively fought to keep the Interstate high ways away from them!

So in the great American tradition, the municipalities should tax their local population, collect all the money and lay it at the feet of Internet barons in New York and beg them to build a fiber optic network for their poor little towns. These companies would spend a dime per dollar to build the network for the towns and skim off the rest. That is the American tradition.

Municipality building its own network! bah! What would happen next? Municipalities to have their own fleet of trucks to remove snow? Or do their own garbage collection fleets? Or run school districts? We need to put an end to all these un American activities. The only real role for municipalities, or any government, is to tax the population and give the money to private companies, with no bid contracts, and to beg them to provide basic services, after taking their cut of 40 to 60% for profits.

Re:Private sector will always do it better.

[MisterSquid]

Socialize? I guess we should get rid of roads, police, military then... because by your definition, anything that the public requests of their government, and then pays for... is "socialist".

We need to be stopping the relentless growth of big corporations and monopolies, not giving them more power & money to control politics.

That's the whole point. Publicly funded "roads, police, military" are socialist and, even so, are perceived by many upstanding Americans to be good things.

In other words, using "socialism" and "socialist" as labels to demonize something or someone is mere rhetoric. A socialist approach to a problem should be evaluated on its merits against and in combination with other approaches.

The use of the word "socialism" as a label often stops thoughtful deliberation, and those who use such labels usually have something to lose if their listeners really think about the issues at hand. Better to stop further thinking by riling their emotions.