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Comment by clavalle | Hacker News Reader

What justification do the states give for forbidding municipal broadband?

I'm not a lawyer, but as I understand it, the states' justifications aren't important to this appeal. The decision that "the FCC is not able to, essentially, remove state laws that prevent the construction of municipal broadband networks" (from the article) doesn't say anything about the legality of the state laws, just that the FCC doesn't have the authority to change them.

Fair enough. I wasn't suggesting it was relevant to the decision.

Just, considering the democratic ideal of the government serving the people, I struggle to come up with a plausible justification that the states might give for denying municipalities and I'm hoping someone more familiar with the matter here at HN can shed some light.

I live in Chattanooga, home of EPB, which was one of the municipally owned ISPs that was hoping this case went the other way. The common argument we hear for the laws that restrict EPB from expanding is that it's "anti-competitive," since they aren't a private business.

How much competition was in Chattanooga before EPB?

Before EPB, it was basically just Comcast. So none.

Yeah, I hear this all the time: "municipal broadband services would be anticompetitive", while ignoring the fact that there is a de facto monopoly in place and municipal broadband would actually introduce competition.

I noticed that line of argument seemed more common when I lived in the south (NC).

From a policy prospective, a government service provider will stifle competition. Since the government can lose money and use taxes to survive, while a private company must be efficient enough to show a profit, the government service provider is less efficient. And, since government can operate below cost (using tax subsidies) , private companies are priced out of the market, lowering competition.

In terms of politics, cable providers have lobbied to carve out a legal monopoly for themselves, and so, in effect we see the same effect from the private company.

The answer, in my opinion, is to have the municipalities run empty conduit to every home, and allow any private company to lay their cable there. This would allow more competition for electricity, cable, and potentially other utilities.

Neither the stifling competition nor the cable desired monopoly reasons apply in the Tennessee situation, though. The areas that Chattanooga's municipal broadband provider wishes to expand into are neighboring areas in which there is no existing broadband to compete with, and the cable companies have declined to expand into those areas.

It doesn't need to give one. Just like how they can arbitrarily declare things like "You can't sell alcohol on Sunday"[0], unless they're violating a federal law/the Constitution, states can do almost anything they want.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_laws_in_the_United_States

Right. Maybe that's a bad example because that does represent the will of the churchgoing populous, though.

I can come up with a plausible explanation for that since it does seem to serve the will of a lot of people who also happen to be people that vote heavily -- especially considering the time period the law was made.

For banning municipal broadband, though? I can't think of any way that serves any significant bloc of people in the state.

Probably similar justification as for veggie libel laws and gun owners privacy laws.

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