Broadband Choice for Apartment Buildings

Ryland Sherman recently wrote an article for the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society that recommends that Congress acts to change the rules that allow landlords to block ISPs from their buildings. He also points out that any meaningful change also will require eliminating the ability of ISPs and landlords to negotiate exclusive contracts that block other ISPs from entering buildings. His final recommendation is that any federal laws on the issue should prohibit states from erecting barriers that would keep ISPs out of apartment buildings. These are all great ideas and they’ve been on my wish list for years should there ever be another telecommunications act coming out of Congress. Only Congress can make the needed changes since the Federal Communications Commission has its hands tied by the messy history of court rulings on the subject over the last few decades. Unfortunately, Sherman’s recommended changes alone won’t fix all of the problems. These changes will allow ISPs to enter buildings that they’ve been precluded from. But no law can force ISPs to enter apartment buildings. The reality is that it’s expensive for a new ISP to rewire many apartment buildings. Many ISPs have only agreed to spend the money to wire buildings based upon having an exclusive contract. ISPs won’t enter buildings in a competitive environment when the math doesn’t work. It’s hard to imagine that fixing barriers is going to entice ISPs to serve apartments with low-income tenants. The recommendations made Sherman are needed. Allowing ISPs to enter buildings more freely will spur competition in both speeds and prices. We need to come up with new ideas to get ISPs to serve buildings that are expensive to wire or that serve low-income tenants. This will likely need to be a local solution since every market is different. We can’t rely on the private sector to provide good broadband in all multi-tenant buildings – the incumbents have already been accused in many cities of redlining to avoid low-income neighborhoods. We absolutely should remove all barriers that keep ISPs out of multi-tenant buildings. But we need to go a lot further to find ways to get ISPs to serve all these buildings.