by Barbara Lach

Telecommunications incumbents in Missouri found this year a legislative ally in Sen. Ed Emery and together are well on their way to kill municipal networks…yet again.

Introduced in January by Sen. Emery, Senate Bill 186 cleared its way to the full Senate for debate. Using blanket restrictions that prevent cities from selling any type of goods or services—including broadband—when private businesses already offer such goods and services, the bill prohibits municipalities from providing broadband utility services. SB 186 comes less than a year after previous legislative assault on municipal networks in Missouri, HB 2078, failed thanks to arduous work of many community broadband supporters.

To make sure that community networks are never deployed in Missouri, SB 186 also allows incumbent telecoms to define the term ‘broadband.’ Incumbents could define and offer broadband as 10 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload, although the FCC defines broadband as 25 Mbps down and 3 Mbps up. This in itself will prevent a city from starting its own network. In addition, this bill prohibits municipalities from forming partnerships with private sector companies to deploy broadband. As a result of this legislative action, Missouri residents will be stuck with lower speeds, inferior services and higher prices—bad for the people, bad for the economy, bad for education and bad for America.

The plea of some technology companies and policy organizations, such as Google, Netflix and Next Century Cities, to reject SB 186 as “a virtual ban on local choice, harming both the public and private sectors, stifling economic growth,” job creation and quality of life, has fallen on deaf ears of Sen. Dan Hegeman, Vice-Chairman of the Economic Development and Local Government Committee. Their argument in favor of businesses’ timely access to advanced networks and customers’ access to modern products and services went ignored by Missouri legislators. In their letter to Sen. Hegeman, the tech companies and advocates wrote SB 186 “is bad for Missouri communities…bad for private sector, particularly high-technology companies, and bad for America’s global competitiveness.” In pushing SB 186 to a Senate vote, Missouri legislators demonstrate strong support for monopolies while stifling residents’ access to fast Internet and all the advantages that it offers.

Municipal broadband networks serve well in communities where incumbent private service providers contribute to the digital divide or fail to upgrade infrastructure for high-speed Internet. Case in point Chattanooga, Tenn. The “Gig City” runs taxpayer-owned fiber optic network that provides affordable and very fast connections to its residents. But successful community-owned networks, like the Gig City or Greenlight in Wilson, NC, or the Roanoke Valley Authority, Va., are under attack. Backed by incumbents, such as AT&T, Verizon and Charter, anti-municipal broadband legislation intends not only to keep the existing city-owned networks from expanding but also to ban deployment of new networks. For example, Virginia House Bill 2108, introduced by state Delegate Kathy Byron, who received contributions from six telecom corporations, to limit municipal initiatives is now before the state senate. In Tennessee some legislators with good intentions, like Rep. Dan Howell, have argued since 2016 to repeal a law that limits community broadband, but incumbent AT&T of Tenn., which received $156 million in federal subsidies in September, lobbied successfully to delay HB 1303 for a year, thus preserving big telecoms’ monopoly. Christopher Mitchell of the Institute for Local Self Reliance urges to advocate for community broadband. Mitchell said, “Missouri should be encouraging investment and local Internet choice, not working with monopoly lobbyists to prevent it.”

Missouri legislators should not go out of their way to stifle competition and limit broadband access to the underserved residents, schools and municipalities. Under the old-fashioned concept of government, government actually governs to benefit the people. In 2017, however, our state government has abandoned large portions of city and rural residents, leaving them at the mercy of multi-billion dollar telecom corporations. Community-owned and municipal networks have an uphill battle against incumbents; they do not need the state government to prohibit them from even beginning the trek up the hill. What state legislators should do, instead, is work feverishly to remove the barriers to entry for local governments that are interested in connecting people left behind by the cable behemoths.