As it currently stands, the Federal Communications Commission is planning to repeal net neutrality. Net neutrality effectively prevents internet service providers from being able to slow speeds for those websites and internet users who don’t pay extra.
Overwhelmingly, people want to keep Net Neutrality: 77 percent of Americans support net neutrality, including 80 percent of Democrats and 73 percent of Republicans. However, the FCC has chosen to side with corporations like Comcast, Charter Communications, AT&T and Verizon instead of with the general public.
Losing net neutrality is a symptom of a larger problem: the control of internet services by a corporate oligopoly. ISPs will deliberately avoid competing with each other in different areas, allowing them to create regional monopolies and duopolies that help keep prices high.
Beyond this, there’s very little incentive for ISPs to extend their service to rural communities, which tend to be poorer and have fewer potential customers; as a result, many non-urban Americans lack access to any internet.
In this contemporary era, the internet is more than just a way to argue with your weird uncle, or collect cartoon frogs. The internet is a public utility: it is, for the modern day, what the developments of the railroads, electricity, and telephone were for times past. Beyond this, the internet was established with public funding, and it has been extended through work and research performed by government institutions.
Since internet services have been a public utility generated by public funds, it is not much of a stretch to propose the public provision of internet services, specifically by municipally owned institutions and cooperatives.
This proposal has precedents: viable models for municipal internet services already exist. For example, Chattanooga, Tennessee currently has some of the fastest and most affordable internet in the world, provided by the municipally-owned Electric Power Board of Chattanooga.
The introduction of municipal broadband has been similarly successful in towns like Wilson, North Carolina. Many more cities and towns could pursue these models if it weren’t for the fact that under pressure from corporate ISPs, states have been instituting laws banning the expansion of municipal broadband.
Municipal broadband could work well for many cities and large towns, but what about areas that are less densely populated, that might not be able to afford the necessary infrastructure?
