Comcast does public-private broadband projects across footprint

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen visited a recently completed Comcast rural broadband project in Stafford County, Virginia, highlighting that this is a public-private project between Comcast and the county. The giant cable company is involved in public-private partnerships across its national footprint. For years cable operators such as Comcast, Charter and Cox have fought hard against municipal broadband projects, always crying that it’s wrong for taxpayer dollars to compete against their private investments. But now, the competitive landscape is shifting. There’s a lot of taxpayer money available through government programs such as ARPA and most significantly through the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program. Cable incumbents are competing against fiber providers such as Verizon, AT&T and Frontier, and they’ll all be competing against upstart fiber and fixed wireless providers to win public-private contracts.