Local Control Means Less Reliance on an Ineffective Federal Communications Commission

In a setback to efforts aimed at enhancing broadband access across Wisconsin, the state Senate this week dealt a blow to three key bills aimed at improving various aspects of broadband provision.

The Rural Digital Opportunity Fund was supposed to drive affordable fiber into vast swaths of long-underserved parts of rural America. But the program has been plagued with problems since its inception, putting both current and future broadband funding opportunities at risk. French-owned cable company Altice is the latest to announce it would be defaulting on 18 census block groups in Louisiana.

Massachusetts and New York officials hope to entice affordable housing property owners with new grant programs that would pay the retrofitting costs to expand high-speed Internet connectivity into decades-old affordable housing developments. Given that many of these multi-dwelling units (MDUs) were built before the advent of the Internet, a significant number of low-income tenants are living in buildings that are not wired to support reliable broadband connections or where residents can’t afford monopoly provider prices.

Language added to a New York State budget bill is threatening to undermine a municipal broadband grant program established by Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office earlier this year. Buried near the bottom of the Assembly budget proposal is a Trojan horse legislative sources say is being pushed by lobbyists representing Charter Spectrum, the regional cable monopoly and 2nd largest cable company in the U.S. that was nearly kicked out of New York by state officials in 2018 for atrocious service.

Hardy Telecommunications, a small community-owned cooperative, connected its first fiber customer in 2013. Slowly and consistently, the cooperative has been expanding its fiber network and is now serving over 5,000 subscribers.

Los Angeles becomes first city in the nation to define digital discrimination at the local level in the wake of the new rules issued by the Federal Communications Commission to prevent digital discrimination. Other cities from Oakland to Cleveland are also leveraging the new FCC rules for local action.