Anticorporate Broadband Populists’ Real Agenda: Destroy the Current Private-Sector System

Animated by hostility toward corporations and a belief that broadband should be a public utility, populists seek to overthrow the current system and replace it with one in which government provides broadband or tightly regulates it. Their campaign strategy is to convince policymakers and the public that US broadband is a failure so they can build support for policies to weaken corporate providers and strengthen non-corporate alternatives, including government-run networks. They allege broadband is too slow, coverage is too limited, service is too expensive, and providers are too profitable. But data shows these claims are wrong, vastly exaggerated, or irrelevant to the real issues policymakers should address. Policymakers should not be taken in by this radical campaign. To be sure, there are areas that need improvement, but abandoning the current structure of private, intermodal competition will reduce, not improve, US broadband performance. Policymakers, the media, and the public need to understand the true motivation for populists’ relentless attacks on the performance of the US broadband system.

[Robert D. Atkinson is the founder and president of ITIF]