Bernie Sanders vows to break up huge ISPs and regulate broadband prices

Enlarge / Bernie Sanders speaks to the Organic Farmers Association on December 05, 2019 in Story City, Iowa. (credit: Getty Images | Win McNamee )

Presidential candidate and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders yesterday released a plan to overhaul the US broadband market by breaking up giant providers, outlawing data caps, regulating broadband prices, and providing $150 billion to build publicly owned networks.

"The Internet as we know it was developed by taxpayer-funded research, using taxpayer-funded grants in taxpayer-funded labs," the Sanders plan said. "Our tax dollars built the Internet, and access to it should be a public good for all, not another price-gouging profit machine for Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon."

If enacted, Sanders' "High-Speed Internet for All" plan would be the polar opposite of the Trump administration's treatment of broadband companies and far more aggressive than the regulatory approach of the Obama administration. Sanders pledged to "use existing antitrust authority to break up Internet service provider and cable monopolies," specifically by "bar[ring] service providers from also providing content and unwind anticompetitive vertical conglomerates."

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