Chapter 9

United States: Communities
providing affordable, fast
broadband Internet
By Thomas M. Hanna and Christopher MitchellIn the United States, one of the fastest growing areas of municipalisationand local public ownership is high-speed broadband Internet networks.
This is due, in part, to the failure of the highly concentrated, corporatedominated telecommunications sector to provide fast and affordable
service in many parts of the country – especially rural areas, smaller
towns and cities, and communities with low levels of income and economic
development. In the modern, information-driven economy, this has
profound implications for economic development, social and economic
equality, and ecological sustainability. Just as they did with the criticalbackbone economic infrastructure of the twentieth century – electric
systems, roads and bridges, water and sewer systems, airports, ports,
mass transit, and so on – communities across the country are starting
to use public ownership to build and operate the digital infrastructureneeded in the twenty-first century. Data from the Institute for Local
Self-Reliance (ILSR) shows that in the past several years, more than800 communities (including cities, towns and counties) have establishedcommunity owned broadband networks.1 Of these, 500 are publicly
owned.2 Moreover, more than 150 of these communities (in 29 states)
have super-fast networks of at least 1 Gbps and 20 communities (in fourstates) offer 10 Gbps networks, which is hundreds of times faster than the
average US Internet connection.

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USA OF CASES 230
TOTAL NUMBER

Remunicipalisation 81
Municipalisation 149

Energy11
Health care &social services

2
Local government

1

Telecommunications

145
Water

Highlights

71• A total of 11 energy (re)municipalisations occurred, aimed at tackling theclimate crisis, building community wealth and increasing democratic (user)
control.
• Since 2002, there have been 71 water remunicipalisations. The busiest year
was 2010, with 10 reclaimed water services, leading to reduced user fees.
• Flagship water remunicipalisations took place in Atlanta, Missoula, Montara
and Pittsburgh.
• At least 141 new public telecommunication services were created to
improve access and democratic control, to deliver jobs and stimulate
economic activity (Tullahoma and Chattanooga), improve quality of life andto advance health and education (EC Fiber in Vermont).
• Interesting public-public partnership models involving local authorities
in Washington State (Northwest Open Access Network), Skagit County andThomasville.

Prison 1

Supporting the development of local, publicly owned broadband
networks has also become a mainstream national political issue. In
early 2015, then-President Barack Obama visited the site of one such
publicly owned network (Cedar Falls, Iowa) and announced several steps
his administration would be taking to bolster public and community
broadband networks.3 As discussed further below, a centrepiece of thiseffort was an attempt to stop state governments enacting corporatebacked laws impeding communities from establishing such networks.
This effort ultimately failed due to the limits of executive branch powers
and the election of Donald Trump as President in 2016. However, in August
2019, Senator and Democratic Party presidential candidate Elizabeth
Warren unveiled a US$85 billion plan to aid in the development of such

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networks (along with co-operative and non-profit networks), especiallyin rural areas.4 Critically, for-profit corporations would be excluded
from receiving these funds. The plan also called for legislation to remove
state-level limitations on local networks. One of her challengers, themore centrist Pete Buttigieg, unveiled a similar plan.5

Slower speeds, limited access
Many people probably assume that in the twenty-first century, theworld’s largest economy would also have the best access to high-speed
Internet. However, that simply is not the case. According to recent estimates by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), 21.3 million
Americans (more than the total population of the Netherlands) do nothave access to an Internet connection with download/upload speeds of atleast 25 Mbps/3 Mbps (considered by the government to be the bare minimum to qualify as broadband service). Meanwhile, 138 million people
do not have access to a connection with speeds of at least 250 Mbps/25
Mbps.6 When considering these numbers, it is also worth rememberingthat first and foremost, they are likely an underestimate, and second, justbecause a person may have access to high-speed Internet, does not mean
they can afford it. As Senator Warren pointed out in her plan, nearly 30
per cent of households in some urban areas, such as Detroit and Cleveland, do not have any Internet connection, and this is primarily due tocost. On top of this, Internet in the United States is far slower and more
expensive than most other advanced countries. According to recent estimates, the United States may be as low as 15th in the world when it comesto average speeds; and 56th when it comes to cost per Mb.7
A corporate oligopoly in the telecommunications sector is a major
reason why wide swathes of the country (both geographically and socioeconomically) are left with inferior or unaffordable service. ‘Given that
duopolies presently dominate both the wired (Comcast, Time Warner)
and wireless (Verizon, AT&T) U.S. markets’, University of Pennsylvania

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professor Victor Pickard writes, ‘it is reasonable to assume that a lackof competition plays an important role in this predicament’.8 Similarly,
Harvard’s Susan Crawford writes:‘most Americans probably believe the communications sector of theeconomy has room for innumerable competitors, but they may besurprised at how concentrated the market for the modern-day equivalentof the standard phone line is. These days what that basic transmission
service is facilitating is high-speed access to the Internet. In that market,
there are two enormous monopoly submarkets – one for wireless andone for wired transmission. Both are dominated by two or three large
companies.’9
These corporations have little incentive to invest in improving Internet
networks in sparsely populated or low-income areas, and every incentive
to raise prices as much as possible in areas where they have a monopoly(or duopoly).
Simply put, many municipalities cannot rely upon a few large
telecommunications corporations to provide the digital infrastructureneeded to develop thriving local economies and communities in thetwenty-first century. For many areas in the US, this is especially critical
as a lack of economic opportunity is a major factor in the migration ofpeople to large cities (and their suburban areas) and lower population
growth in rural areas.10 This leads to a downward spiral of lower tax
revenues, service cuts, and further population loss that has left many UScommunities struggling to survive.

Local ownership and control
For an increasing number of US communities, the solution to this problem
has been municipalisation. Specifically, that means the development anddeployment of publicly owned, high-speed broadband Internet networks,

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often established and operated by a local, publicly owned electric utility.
These networks use fiber-optic cables and have the capacity to provide
phone and television service in addition to Internet access. They canconnect a whole city or community (‘Fiber to the Home’ or FTTH), most ofa city or community, or certain areas (e.g. business or medical districts).
One of the primary motivations for establishing a municipal broadband
network is access and affordability, especially as it relates to economic
development and ensuring local businesses can thrive. For instance, inThomasville, Georgia publicly owned Community Network Services (CNS)
is credited with helping to support local small businesses and a thriving
downtown area. ‘The best part about CNS’, the company explains, ‘isthat it is funded locally, by the cities which it serves. This means if you
are a CNS customer, you are investing in your own communities, not a
corporation headquartered across the country’.11

Case I: Tullahoma, Tennessee
Municipal broadband networks are also often credited withattracting business investment and jobs to areas that otherwise
would not have been considered. Recently, EnableComp (a medical
claims processor) announced that it would set up an office witharound 200 jobs in the city of Tullahoma, Tennessee. The city’s
mayor and economic development chief both credit the municipal
broadband network LightTUBe (run by the publicly owned
Tullahoma Utilities Authority, which is also responsible for thecity’s water, electricity and wastewater services) for the decision.
According to Lisa Gonzalez of ILSR, ‘before the city invested in the
network, job growth in Tullahoma lagged behind the rest of thestate, but within two years after the city began offering broadband,that statistic changed. Job growth in the city doubled Tennessee’s
statewide rate’.12

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Case ll: Mount Washington, Massachusetts
Many communities, especially those not served or underserved by
the few large telecommunications corporations, have establishedpublicly owned broadband networks in order to ensure further
reaching or more reliable service. For instance, because of its
remote location, residents of the small town of Mount Washington,
Massachusetts were forced to rely on unreliable and expensive
satellite Internet service. In 2013, the town began to explore thepotential for municipalisation. After receiving an exemption (dueto population size) from state laws that require such networks
to be run by a publicly owned Municipal Light Plant (electricor gas utility), the municipality established the Town of Mount
Washington Fiber Network in 2017. The town received financial
support in this endeavour from the Massachusetts Broadband
Initiative, a state agency.13

Case lll: Wilson, North Carolina
Poor service and affordability were also reasons why the City ofWilson, North Carolina established a city-wide municipal broadband
network called Greenlight in 2006. The success of Greenlight hasforced Time Warner Cable (now Charter Spectrum) to keep its
prices down to compete. Between 2007 and 2009, Time Warnerraised its rates in non-competitive neighbouring jurisdictions by
as much as 52 per cent but kept prices stable in Wilson.14 Fasterand more reliable Internet for residential customers also has an
economic component as it supports small home-based businesses
and entrepreneurs, telecommuting options for larger businesses,
and general quality of life improvements that make local areas
attractive to businesses.15

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Case lV: Chattanooga, Tennessee
While many municipal broadband networks offer faster than
average service, some are even starting to roll out 10 Gbps service. One example is in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where the city’s
publicly owned utility (Electric Power Board) has been operatinga fiber network since 2009. It was the first location in the UnitedStates to offer 1 Gbps service and it subsequently upgraded to
10 Gbps. ILSR reports that from 2011 to 2015, the network was
responsible for adding around 2,800 new jobs and US$1 billion
to the local economy.16 It is also one of the larger publicly owned
networks in the country, serving not only the roughly 180,000
residents of Chattanooga, but also those in the neighbouring
jurisdictions of East Ridge, Ridgeside, Signal Mountain, Lookout
Mountain, Red Bank, Rossville (Georgia), Flintstone (Georgia)
and Wildwood (Georgia).

Partnership options
While many municipal broadband networks are owned and operated bya single municipality, a few communities have come together in publicpublic partnerships. This allows municipalities, especially those that aresmaller in size or density, to overcome certain hurdles related to scale
and the cost of providing service. For instance, Community Network
Services is a partnership between Thomasville and the cities of Cairo,
Camilla and Moultrie. In 1997, these municipalities formed the South
Georgia Governmental Services Authority, through which CNS was
subsequently established. In 2015, CNS expanded into two additional
communities (Doerun, where it took over operations of another, small
publicly owned utility; and Norman Park, where it purchased a for-profit
cable company). Another similar network is ECFiber in East Central
Vermont. Comprised of 24 communities that are ill-served by corporate
providers, ECFiber partnered with a non-profit Internet service provider

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called ValleyNet to deliver ‘fast, reliable, and affordable Internet to every
home, business, and civic institution in our territory’.17 As of June 2019,
ECFiber has connected 3,500 residents in 22 of the towns (with eight fully
covered). ‘If private business cannot or will not create the infrastructureneeded to support the Vermont lifestyle’, the network states, then ‘local
government and community-based organisations such as ECFiber can
and will’.18
Three other variations on this theme of partnership are: 1) publicpublic partnerships between local public enterprises and services withina municipality; 2) ‘balanced’ public-private partnerships with smaller,
for-profit companies (and with the city retaining ownership); and3) municipal support for the development of multi-community cooperatives.
To illustrate the first, the recent public-public agreement between two
publicly owned entities in Skagit County, Washington – the Port of Skagit
and the Skagit Public Utility District (which provides water services) –plans to develop a fiber network that will improve access in rural areasof the county (the cities of Mount Vernon and Burlington already havemunicipal broadband networks).19
Westminster, Maryland is an example of a “balanced” public-private
partnership. Here, the municipality is building a city-wide fiber networkthat will provide all residents access to a 1 Gbps Internet. The service isprovided by a small, private Internet service provider called Ting, whichhas 400 employees and operates in several small towns and cities. Aftera period of exclusivity, Ting will be required to provide open access tothe network (meaning other companies or entities can provide service
to customers).20 Unlike larger corporations, Ting prides itself on its
commitment to the concept of a free and open Internet (net neutrality)
over the possibility of generating higher profits by prioritising certain
contents and customers.

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Finally, an example of municipally supported multi-community cooperatives is the RS Fiber Cooperative in south central Minnesota. The
co-operative offers wireless and fiber-optic service to around 6,200
homes, farms and small businesses in a roughly 700 square mile area.
To establish the co-operative, 10 small cities and 17 townships came
together and formed a Joint Powers Agreement that allowed them to sellbonds, the proceeds from which were then lent to the co-operative tostart building the network.21

Challenges
Due to the rapid spread of municipalisation and the success of local,
publicly owned broadband networks, the large telecommunications
corporations and their political allies in state governments have madeit a priority to block and hinder such efforts (although in recent years,
as discussed below, a détente has settled in). Currently, 19 states haveenacted laws that impede or impair the establishment of municipal
broadband networks, often, ILSR reports, ‘at the behest of large telecom
monopolies’.22 Commonly referred to as ‘preemption laws’, these range
from outright bans in a handful of states to onerous and complicated legal
and financial requirements that do not apply to the private sector. These
preemption laws have in some cases prevented new municipalisations,
restricted expansion of municipal broadband networks, or forced
municipalities to consider selling or closing their service.
In early 2015, during the Obama administration, the FCC issued a rulingthat attempted to use federal regulatory authority to overturn statelaws restricting local municipalisation efforts. As expected, hostile
state governments led by Tennessee and North Carolina sued the FCC
in an attempt to maintain their state-level preemption laws. In August
2016, the Sixth Court of Appeals overturned the FCC ruling, findingthat only a direct act of Congress could stop state-level restrictions
on local publicly owned broadband networks. It is for this reason that

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a centrepiece of Senator Warren’s plan for supporting municipal andco-operative broadband networks was federal legislation banning suchstate-level laws. ‘We will preempt these laws and return this power tolocal governments’, her plan stated.23
Alongside preemption laws, corporate lobbyists in state governments
are also actively trying to bar municipal broadband networks (andmunicipalities more generally) from receiving state investment funds forbroadband development – limiting the expansion potential of municipal
broadband while at the same time diverting those funds into corporate
coffers. For instance, in 2018 Michigan introduced legislation that would
have established a state fund to support broadband infrastructure.
Municipalities would have been barred from receiving grants from thefund and the threshold for a project to qualify for grants was set at ameasly 10 Mbps/1 Mbps. With such provisions, the law would transfer‘money from the state treasury to Frontier, AT&T, and any other telcothat refuses to invest in anything better than DSL [Digital Subscriber
Line] in rural Michigan’, wrote Lisa Gonzalez of ILSR at the time.24
While the original bill failed, the restrictive provisions were included inappropriations legislation that subsequently became law. Tennessee andVirginia have also prevented local governments from applying for statebroadband subsidies.25

A bright future
While

corporate

lobbying

andstate-level

preemption

laws

are

undoubtedly an ongoing challenge, broadband municipalisations in the
United States are likely to continue in the coming years. In addition topotential future federal action that could dramatically scale up financial
and legal support for the development of municipal networks, there
are indications that some states are beginning to think more critically
about the impact that such preemption laws have on their economies
and communities. The last major preemption law was enacted in 2011147

United States: Communities providing affordable, fast broadband Internet(North Carolina), and since then restrictions in three states (California,
Colorado and Arkansas) have been lifted, weakened or proven a false
barrier to municipal broadband development. Moreover, more than halfof all states, including the populous states of California and New York,currently have no such restrictions.
The primary reason municipalisation is likely to continue, however, isthat it has a proven track record of success and is generally popular at
the local level. Hundreds of US communities have decided not to abandon
their fate to a handful of large corporations, and instead are taking controlof their own destiny by establishing the economic infrastructure they
will need to thrive in the twenty-first century. Many are already seeing
the fruits of their efforts as their publicly owned broadband networks
deliver jobs and economic activity (e.g. Tullahoma and Chattanooga,
Tennessee), improved quality of life (e.g. Wilson, North Carolina andMount Washington, Massachusetts), advances in health and education(e.g. EC Fiber in Vermont), and, crucially, local democratic control. For
the tens of millions of Americans and thousands of local communities
that continue to lack access to affordable, high-speed Internet, thesepioneering efforts illuminate a path to economic stability and a more
equitable and prosperous future.

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Christopher Mitchell is the Director of the Community
Broadband Networks Initiative with the Institutefor Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) in Minneapolis.
Mitchell is a leading national expert on community
networks and Internet access. He also serves as
the Policy Director for Next Century Cities within
his role at ILSR. On a day-to-day basis, Mitchellruns MuniNetworks.org, the comprehensive online
clearinghouse of information about local government
policies to improve Internet access.
Thomas M. Hanna is Research Director at The
Democracy Collaborative and Co-Director of theorganization’s Theory, Policy, and Research Division.
He has published dozens of articles in popularand academic journals on democratic models ofownership and governance. His recent publications
include Our Common Wealth: The Return of Public
Ownership in the United States (Manchester
University Press, 2018), The Crisis Next Time:
Planning for Public Ownership as an Alternative toCorporate Bank Bailouts (Next System Project, 2018).

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Endnotes
1

Community Networks (2019) Community Network Map. Available at: https://muninetworks.org/
communitymap (retrieved 4 September 2019).

2

Electric co-operatives own networks that serve around 300 communities. ILSR is still gathering information on networks developed by telephone co-operatives and considers the current
data to be a dramatic underrepresentation of the actual number of communities served bysuch co-operative networks.

3

Obama, B. (2015) ‘Remarks by the President on Promoting Community Broadband’. Obama
White House Archives. Available at: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2015/01/14/remarks-president-promoting-community-broadband (retrieved 4 September2019).

4

Warren, E. (2019). ‘My Plan to Invest in Rural America’. Medium. Available at: https://medium.
com/@teamwarren/my-plan-to-invest-in-rural-america-94e3a80d88aa (retrieved 4 September2019).

5

Coldewey, D. (2019). ‘Pete Buttigieg Echoes Warren with $80B Rural Broadband Plan’. TechCrunch. Available at: https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/13/pete-buttigieg-echoes-warren-with-80brural-broadband-plan/ (retrieved 5 September 2019).

6

Federal Communications Commission (2019) 2019 Broadband Deployment Report. FCC.
Available at: https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-19-44A1.pdf (retrieved 5 September2019).

7

Lai, S. (2019). Countries with the Fastest Internet in the World 2019. Atlas & Boots. Available
at: https://www.atlasandboots.com/remote-jobs/countries-with-the-fastest-internet-in-the-world/(retrieved 4 September 2019); Lai, S. (2019). Countries with the Cheapest Internet in the World– Ranked. Atlas & Boots. Available at: https://www.atlasandboots.com/remote-jobs/countrieswith-the-cheapest-internet-world/ (retrieved 4 September 2019).

8

Pickard, V. (2015) America’s Battle for Media Democracy: The Triumph of Corporate Libertarianism and the Future of Media Reform. New York: Cambridge University Press, p. 221.

9

Crawford, S. (2013) Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New
Gilded Age. New Haven: Yale University Press, p. 5.

10Wharton Public Policy Initiative (2018) Rural America is Losing Young People – Consequences
and Solutions. University of Pennsylvania. Available at: https://publicpolicy.wharton.upenn.edu/
live/news/2393-rural-america-is-losing-young-people- (retrieved 4 September 2019).

11

Community Network Services (2019) About CNS. Available at: http://www.cns-internet.com/
Content/Default/7/426/0/cns/about-us.html (retrieved 6 September 2019).

12

Gonzalez, L. (2019) LighTUBe Attracts 200 New Jobs to Tullahoma, Tennessee. Community
Networks. Available at: https://muninetworks.org/content/lighttube-attracts-jobs-tullahoma-tennessee (retrieved 4 September 2019).

13

Gonzalez, L. (2017). Mount Washington, MA, Makes the Next Move: Design, Construction.
Community Networks. Available at: https://muninetworks.org/content/mount-washington-mamakes-next-move-design-construction (retrieved 5 September 2019).

14

The Executive Office of the President, (2017). Community-Based Broadband Solutions. [Obama
White House Archives. Available at: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/
docs/community-based_broadband_report_by_executive_office_of_the_president.pdf (retrieved 5
September 2019).

15

Community Networks (n.d.) Municipal Networks and Economic Development. Available at:https://muninetworks.org/content/municipal-networks-and-economic-development (retrieved 5
September 2019).

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16

Community Networks (n.d.) Municipal FTTH Networks. Available at: https://muninetworks.org/
content/municipal-ftth-networks (retrieved 5 September 2019).

17

EC Fiber (2019) Available at: https://www.ecfiber.net/ (retrieved 5 September 2019).

18

EC Fiber (2019) Available at: https://www.ecfiber.net/ (retrieved 5 September 2019).

19

Gonzalez, L. (2018) Port and PUD Partnering for Fiber in Skagit. Community Networks.
Available at: https://muninetworks.org/tags/tags/mt-vernon (retrieved 5 September 2019).

20

Lucey, P. and Mitchell, C. (2016) Successful Strategies for Broadband Public-Private Partner=
ships. [online). Institute for Local Self-Reliance. Available at: https://ilsr.org/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2016/08/PPP-Report-2016-1.pdf (retrieved 5 September 2019).

21

Carlson, S. and Mitchell, C. (2016) RS Fiber: Fertile Fields for New Rural Internet Cooperative
Institute for Local Self-Reliance and Next Century Cities. Available at: https://ilsr.org/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2016/04/rs-fiber-report-2016.pdf (retrieved 5 September 2019]; RS Fiber,(no date). What is RS Fiber? [online)Available at: https://www.rsfiber.coop/about-us/what-is-rsfiber/ (retrieved 5 September 2019).

22

Kienbaum, K. (2019) Preemption Détente: Municipal Broadband Networks Face Barriers in 19
States. Community Networks. Available at: https://muninetworks.org/content/preemption-detente-municipal-broadband-networks-face-barriers-19-states (retrieved 5 September 2019).

23

Warren, E. (2019) ‘My Plan to Invest in Rural America’. Medium. Available at: https://medium.
com/@teamwarren/my-plan-to-invest-in-rural-america-94e3a80d88aa (retrieved 4 September2019).

24

Gonzalez, L. (2018) Malicious Michigan Bill in Committee December 6th. Community
Networks. Available at: https://muninetworks.org/content/malicious-michigan-bill-committee-december-6th (retrieved 5 September 2019).

25

Gonzalez, L. (2019) Three States, Their Local Communities, and Broadband Funding Denied.
Community Networks. Available at: https://muninetworks.org/content/three-states-their-localcommunities-and-broadband-funding-denied (retrieved 10 September 2019).

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