“President Obama’s call for more cities and towns to create their own broadband Internet services to compete with private companies like Comcast is meeting stiff opposition from many Republicans,” Julian Hattem reports for The Hill. “”
“Unlike the president’s previous proposals this week to bulk up U.S. cybersecurity and protect Americans’ identities online — which were largely welcomed on Capitol Hill — he waded into hotly partisan waters on Wednesday by unveiling a plan to eliminate state laws limiting local government-run Web connections,” Hattem reports. “Republicans were swift to denounce the president on Wednesday, as he spoke in Cedar Falls, Iowa — a town that has created its own municipally-owned broadband Internet provider. ‘In Tennessee we have a term to describe people like President Obama — tone-deaf,’Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) said in a statement. ‘At a time when Americans think the biggest problem facing our nation today is big government, you would think he’d have gotten the message by now,’ she added. ‘We don’t need unelected bureaucrats like FCC [Federal Communications Commission] Chairman Tom Wheeler dictating to our states what they can and can’t do with respect to protecting their limited taxpayer dollars and private enterprises.'”
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“The telecommunications industry reacted angrily to the president’s move, saying that it was circumventing Congress and state legislatures. The industry is also opposed to Mr. Obama’s proposal that the F.C.C. regulate the Internet as a public utility, which he announced in November,” Julie Hirschfeld Davis reports for The New York Times. “‘The private sector is much better at deploying capital efficiently than the government,’ said John E. Sununu, a former Republican senator from New Hampshire who is now co-chairman of Broadband for America, an industry coalition. ‘Standing up in public and saying you’re taking on the big guy always inspires some populist sentiment,’ said Mr. Sununu, who is also on Time Warner Cable’s board of directors. ‘But I think what the president is doing here is giving up on Congress, undercutting state laws and pushing rhetoric that doesn’t match the facts.'”
“Michael K. Powell, who served as F.C.C. chairman under President George W. Bush, said Mr. Obama was chasing ‘false solutions,'” Davis reports. “‘While government-run networks may be appropriate in rare cases, many such enterprises have ended up in failure, saddling taxpayers with significant long-term financial liabilities and diverting scarce resources from other pressing local needs,’ said Mr. Powell, the president and chief executive of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, an industry group.”
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“FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai was not enthused by the President’s signal to FCC chairman Tom Wheeler that he supports preemption of state laws limiting municipal broadband, particularly given that he thinks the FCC lacks the authority to use it,” John Eggerton reports for Broadcasting & Cable. “‘As an independent agency, the FCC must make its decisions based on the law, not political convenience,’ said Pai in a statement. ‘And U.S. Supreme Court precedent makes clear that the Commission has no authority to preempt state restrictions on municipal broadband projects. The FCC instead should focus on removing regulatory barriers to broadband deployment by the private sector.'”
“Michael Powell said… ‘America’s decades-long policy of promoting private investment and exercising a light regulatory touch has yielded substantial benefits for American consumers. As evidence, cable’s top broadband speeds have increased over 3200 percent in a decade, Akamai recently reported that 12 American states are among the 20 fastest regions of the world and our markets remain the envy of the world. While government run networks may be appropriate in rare cases, many such enterprises have ended up in failure, saddling taxpayers with significant long-term financial liabilities and diverting scarce resources from other pressing local needs,'” Eggerton reports. “Powell said broadband would clearly play a central role in the fabric of society, but, ‘rather than chase false solutions, government policies should be directed at overcoming barriers to adoption and extending the reach of broadband to places yet unserved. We welcome sensible government policies that will build on our successes and convince even more Americans to take advantage of the broadband opportunity.'”
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MacDailyNews Take: When the answer to literally everything is “more government,” then you know the answer is very likely wrong.
The crux of the problem here is the lack of competition among private broadband providers in many areas of the U.S.A. The logical answer is therefore to foster real, substantive competition among private broadband providers, not to make it a government-run endeavor. Setting the stage to create meaningful competition among private broadband providers is government’s proper role here, not stepping in the provide the service itself. Foster competition, don’t destroy it.
When Standard Oil became a monopoly that threatened competition and therefore, ultimately, consumers, it was broken up into 90 independent private companies that then competed in the free market, the government did not start drilling, pumping, and selling nationalized oil.