Telecoms Bankroll More Misleading Attacks On Community Broadband Networks

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

I've written for years about how U.S. broadband isexpansive, patchy, and slowthanks to mindless consolidation, regulatory capture, regional monopolization, and limited competition. That's resulted in a growing number of pissed off towns, cities, cooperatives, andcity-owned utilitiesbuilding their own, locally-owned and operated broadband networks in a bid forbetter, cheaper, faster broadband.

Regional giants like Comcast, Charter, or AT&T could have responded to this organic trend by offering better, cheaper, faster service. But ultimately they found it far cheaper to undermine these efforts viaregulatory capture,congressional lobbying,lawsuits, protectionist state laws, andmisleading disinformation.

They're big fans of creating fake consumer groups that then attack community broadband networks under the pretense of being locally concerned citizens," which you might recall is something Charter recently got busted for in Maine.

They also enjoy funding various think tanks" who don't think" about policy issues, so much as they parrot false industry attacks. Usually under the pretense of being objective, concerned locals simply looking out for the public welfare.

Like in Idaho and Massachusetts, where telecom-financed groups like the Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA) and the Mountain States Policy Center have been peppering local news outlets with misleading local editorials that lie to locals, and portray community broadband as some sort of inherent government boondoggle. Like this editorial by the TPA in the Cape Cod area:

So there are countless different types of community broadband networks, including municipal networks, cooperatives, city-owned utilities, or even public-private partnerships. There's also a broad variety of ways to fund them, many of which never touch a dime of taxpayer money. A lot of these networks have been helped greatly by the billions in subsidies included in 2021 COVID relief and infrastructure bills.

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