Tennessee Could Give Taxpayers America's Fastest Internet For Free, But It Gave Comcast and AT&T $45 Million Instead (vice.com)

Chattanooga, Tennessee is home to some of the fastest internet speeds in the United States, offering city dwellers Gbps and 10 Gpbs connections. Instead of voting to expand those connections to the rural areas surrounding the city, which have dial up, satellite, or no internet whatsoever, Tennessee's legislature voted to give Comcast and AT&T a $45 million taxpayer handout. Motherboard reports: The situation is slightly convoluted and thoroughly infuriating. EPB -- a power and communications company owned by the Chattanooga government -- offers 100 Mbps, 1 Gbps, and 10 Gpbs internet connections. A Tennessee law that was lobbied for by the telecom industry makes it illegal for EPB to expand out into surrounding areas, which are unserved or underserved by current broadband providers. For the last several years, EPB has been fighting to repeal that state law, and even petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to try to get the law overturned. This year, the Tennessee state legislature was finally considering a bill that would have let EPB expand its coverage (without providing it any special tax breaks or grants; EPB is profitable and doesn't rely on taxpayer money). Rather than pass that bill, Tennessee has just passed the "Broadband Accessibility Act of 2017," which gives private telecom companies -- in this case, probably AT&T and Comcast -- $45 million of taxpayer money over the next three years to build internet infrastructure to rural areas.

Comments

Separate the infrastructure from the service?

[Gilgaron]

Through means which don't make sense prima facie, I can switch electric and natural gas providers at will while the utility company continues to provide the connectivity. Why can't we 'nationalize' the fiber but let service providers compete on the service?

Re:Money well spent.

[methano]

This has gotten to be standard fare. About 6 or 7 years ago, Wilson NC, fed up with Comcast or some such equally evil monopoly, took the bull by the horns and installed fiber throughout the city and gave everybody 1 Gbit service for $40 a month. Anyhow, the NC legislature, bought and paid for, almost immediately passed a law banning such practices. And that was with a Democrat as Governor, though a very Republican legislature would have overridden if she had the guts to veto. And so we all bent over and let TWC put it to us for another 5 years. When AT&T showed up, things got slightly better. The remote works pretty well now.

Here is a radical idea..

[fallen1]

..that has actually been brought up before on Slashdot, but it bears bringing up again.

Why not let each county/city build out a fiber optic network that will serve its citizens, connect to each county that touches them in a peering agreement, then connect to the overall backbone that is the Internet? Once those fiber networks are built out, the county/city can then let any ISP that wants to connect to the fiber and sell services -- with the county/city collecting $XX.xx per connection for upgrades and maintenance. THAT would create competition. Even if the local county/city creates their own ISP, then that service provider/entity must be separate from the entity owning the fiber optics and still has to pay $XX.xx per connection for access to the physical fiber. Fair play and all that.

The county/city entity that owns the fiber should have a completely "hands off" policy (net neutrality) when it comes to data flowing over the fiber and their only concern is the physical upkeep and maintenance.