7 Colorado communities just secured the right to build their own broadband

Voters in seven cities and counties in Colorado voted to free their local governments to offer Internet service. The votes marked a defeat for big, traditional Internet service providers such as Comcast that have successfully maneuvered to inject limits on municipal broadband into state regulations over the last decade. Now cities are figuring out ways to push back, including wiggling out from under laws the industry helped put in place.

Nearly two dozen states have laws limiting the ability of local governments or their partners to offer their own broadband services, often passed with the encouragement of big commercial broadband providers who complain about unfair competition. But Colorado's version of the law is unique in that it offers an escape hatch. The 2005 state law allows municipalities to provide high-speed broadband Internet if "an election shall be called" and a majority of voters signs off on the idea. And that's what these Colorado municipalities did Nov 3. In Boulder (CO), locals voted on whether the city should be "authorized to provide high-speed Internet services (advanced services), telecommunications services, and/or cable television services to residents, businesses, schools, libraries, nonprofit entities and other users of such services." As of late on the night of Nov 3, the city of 100,000 people, which already owns miles of unused fiber, had approved the measure with 84 percent of the vote.