Broadband Firms Use State Law To Deny Citizens Access to Internet

Today’s example of corporate power running amok and distorting the political process comes from a ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. The ruling upheld laws in Tennessee and North Carolina that restricted the spread of municipal broadband networks. Municipal broadband networks usually begin in areas where traditional internet providers either offer incredibly poor or even no service at all because it is not cost-effective to provide service to a few people over a wide area. But internet providers in Tennessee and North Carolina lobbied those states to limit the areas that these municipal broadband networks could service, leaving those customers locked out of the networks at the mercy of the broadband oligopoly or, in most cases, monopoly. The FCC had tried to use its power from a 1996 law that mandated it to remove barriers to broadband investment to block these laws but the appeals court ruled that the state laws were legal. Some lawmakers and other free market types have argued that these networks are costly to set up and could create an undue burden on taxpayers. Thom Tillis, Senator from North Carolina, had this to say, “[u]nelected bureaucrats at the F.C.C. completely overstepped their authority by attempting to deny states like North Carolina from setting their own laws to protect hardworking taxpayers and maintain the fairness of the free market”. Yes, I guess that free market is working really well for those taxpayers who will now be denied internet access because they will no longer have access to the municipal network. Broadband providers have had virtual monopolies for years, providing lousy service at higher prices than most other industrialized nations. And now they are using their power in state legislatures to actually deny citizens access to the internet.