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Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Municipal Broadband

President Obama is speaking up for municipal broadband. Last week, the president announced a new effort to support communities that want to set up their own internet infrastructure and eliminate barriers to publicly-owned broadband. 

In his announcement, President Obama talked about community broadcast success stories like Cedar Falls, Iowa, Lafayette, Louisiana, and Chattanooga, Tennessee. He explained that these cities "have internet speeds nearly 100 times faster than the national average and [they] deliver it at an affordable price." Despite this clear evidence to support publicly-owned internet providers, there are laws in 19 states that make it harder for communities to set up their own system. President Obama said, "In too many places across America, some big companies are doing everything they can to keep out competitors. Today I am saying we are going to change that. Enough is enough." Expanding broadband in communities across our country would create jobs, keep internet prices low, and connect millions of people to the world wide web. So, why aren't we expanding public broadband nationwide?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Be careful and read ALL the fine print. This is the same gut who thrice tried to put all the internet under government control.

Does a leopard change his spots?

Anonymous said...

"Guy", sorry!

Anonymous said...

We need more bandwidth because the NSA siphons off all our data. When the Internet of Things takes over it will only get worse.

Anonymous said...

Free phones, now free internet. Pretty soon there will be no reason to work to get what you want. If this direction the president is pursuing isn't, what I was taught years ago, communism, then I don't know what else to call it....except maybe socialism. It is not democracy, or capitalism, that's for sure.

Anonymous said...

Nowhere did he say free internet. This is about allowing small businesses to grow and takimg away monopolies held by comcast and verizon