How Big Telecom Gets Away With Rewriting America's Laws

Written by Jason Koebler Staff Writer

A telecom-funded policy paper slamming local government-owned broadband networks published Wednesday is masquerading as a serious “economic analysis,” but is yet another example of the dominant players in telecom manipulating the political system to suit their interests.

In the last couple years, there’s been a strong push by local municipalities to provide Gigabit fiber internet connections for their residents, whether that means incentivizing a company like Google to come to their city, partnering with a startup ISP, or building the entire network by themselves using taxpayer money. The “municipal-owned” broadband networks are the ones taken on by The Impact of Government-Owned Broadband Networks on Private Investment and Consumer Welfare, and are, at least in theory, the ones that present the biggest threat to existing ISPs.