Katie Kienbaum

Despite raking in hundreds of millions in government broadband subsidies, Frontier Communications has failed time and time again to bring reliable, high-speed connectivity to the rural communities it serves. Instead of investing in network upgrades, Frontier has neglected its rural infrastructure to the detriment of its subscribers and the company’s own financials, with its worsening service quality paralleling its plummeting stock value.

Digital inclusion is the practice of ensuring digital equity, a condition in which all individuals and communities have the information technology capacity needed for full participation in our society, democracy, and economy. To succeed, digital inclusion practitioners must address the many barriers to digital equity, including unaffordable broadband subscriptions, lack of access to devices, and insufficient digital skills. Communities with publicly owned networks are well-positioned to develop digital inclusion initiatives.

Nineteen states have established legal barriers or even outright bans on publicly owned networks, according to well-respected communications law firm Baller Stokes & Lide. These state laws, often enacted at the behest of large telecom monopolies, slow the development of community owned connectivity in various ways. Many news outlets have erroneously reported that 26 states now preempt municipal broadband networks, based off unintentionally misleading research from BroadbandNow.

Across the country, state legislatures are ushering in better rural connectivity by passing new laws that enable electric cooperatives to expand high-quality Internet access. In recent years, much of this legislation has authorized co-ops to deploy broadband infrastructure along existing electric easements. Other bills have removed restrictions that previously prevented electric co-ops from providing Internet access.

At the beginning of 2019, our Community Broadband Networks team visited North Carolina as part of the Let’s Connect speaking tour. While preparing for the trip and after returning to Minnesota, we researched and mapped Internet access and broadband funding in the state.

Decades after bringing electricity and telephone services to America’s rural households, cooperatives are tackling a new challenge: the rural digital divide. New updates to the Community Broadband Networks initiative’s report Cooperatives Fiberize Rural America: A Trusted Model for the Internet Era, originally published in 2017, illustrate the remarkable progress co-ops have made in deploying fiber optic Internet access across the country. The report features new maps showing overall growth

Recent tax code changes might prevent co-ops from connecting more rural communities. Cooperatives could potentially lose their tax exempt status if they accept government grants for broadband expansion and disaster recovery — an unintended yet foreseeable consequence of the Republican “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” passed late in 2017.