Back in 2008, Chattanooga, Tennessee decided to build its own city-owned fiber broadband network on the back of its existing electrical utility, EPB. In the years since, the network has become one of the most popular in the nation, offering affordable, 25 gigabits per second fiber access to local residents.
It almost struggled to be, thanks to the usual bullshit behavior by regional telecom monopolies like Comcast. Comcast tried repeatedly to sue the network out of existence. As we’ve seen elsewhere, they also used co-funded “free market think tanks,” fake consumer groups, and for-hire pundits to seed lies in the local populace about how community broadband was a dangerous, inevitable boondoggle.
Spoiler: it didn’t work.
Years later and Chattanooga isn’t just providing cheap, affordable fiber, it continues to funnel significant financial benefits back into the community. A new study by researchers at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga has generated $5.3 billion in net community benefits for Hamilton County since 2011.
Benefits range from savings on upgraded smart city meters, local consumer savings on broadband access, free marketing due to the network’s popularity, improved health care outcomes, expanded business and remote work opportunities, improved tourism to revitalized parts of the city, and direct profits from the network itself:
“Since the project was fully completed in 2011, it has returned more than six times the original cost of the investment,” said Bento Lobo, Ph.D., lead author and director of the Department of Finance and Economics at the UTC Rollins College of Business – describing Chattanooga’s fiber network as “one of our community’s most meaningful and impactful investments.”
Telecom monopolies (and the various academics, consultants, lobbyists, and think tankers) spent decades insisting these sorts of networks would be a socialist nightmare and inevitable boondoggle. They did this, because they know that this sort of approach — treating broadband access as a community-owned utility and public good — is extremely effective and extremely popular.
And while telecoms have tried desperately to seed partisan division in the discussions surrounding municipal broadband viability, in reality they see broad, bipartisan support across the electorate. More often than not, they wind up getting built in Conservative cities and counties, thanks in part to frustration with Republican policies on telecom (which almost always involve coddling the regional monopoly).
Republicans and their telecom allies (including fake “taxpayer protection groups”) will breathlessly insist this is all a dangerous waste of taxpayer resources. But if you pay attention, you’ll notice they never have a single bad word to say about the billions taxpayers throw at regional giants like AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon in exchange for broadband networks that are always, curiously, left half-completed.
Open access fiber networks come in a variety of flavors, including directly municipally owned, an extension of the existing city utility, a cooperative, or a public-private partnerships. These creative, locally controlled solutions really do work and are very popular; but routinely get derailed because the U.S., if you hadn’t noticed, is often too corrupt to function in the public interest.
Sixteen states still have laws, ghost written by telecom monopoly lawyers, either banning community owned networks or limiting how they can fund or where they can expand. And at the heat of COVID lockdowns, when these networks were showcasing their significant benefits to local communities, House Republicans responded by trying to ban them country wide.
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