Bills Limiting Broadband Move Forward in MO and TN Legilsatures

Broadband planners and supporters in Missouri and Tennessee say that legislative battles for publicly owned broadband have reached the tipping point this week. In MO, a bill that would prohibit municipalities from running broadband networks passed in the State Senate Jobs, Economic Development, and Local Government Committee and will move to the full Senate for debate.

In TN, several competing bills are in play, including one touted as a compromise that keeps the ban on municipal networks while allowing co-ops to offer broadband under certain conditions. Other proposals would remove municipal broadband limitations completely. On March 8, the TN bill was amended with the governor’s cooperation to allow co-ops to provide video. The original bill prevented co-ops from providing voice or video over any broadband networks they built. The last-minute change indicates that the wording of the bill is still open to negotiation — either to favor municipalities or to favor the positions of large telecommunications corporations that oppose the measure. In 2016, for example, when the Legislature was on the brink of removing municipal broadband restrictions entirely, AT&T forestalled the vote by helping push through a measure to study the issue for another year.