Victory over telecom industry gives Connecticut towns a way to provide their own faster, cheaper internet service

The telecommunications industry lost and consumers won in a Connecticut Superior Court decision that gives cities and towns the right to use existing utility infrastructure within their borders to create municipal networks that deliver cheap, fast internet service to homes and businesses. Perhaps the greatest benefit to consumers in the decision in a suit by towns against the telecommunications industry and state utility regulators is its potential to develop a means of delivering fast, efficient internet services to underserved towns in the state’s rural northern corners and in parts of large cities like Hartford. Judge Richard Shortall concluded that, under state law, cities and towns have the right to create internet networks by stringing their own cables on the poles and through the underground conduit that distribute cable television, telephone and electric service within their borders. The towns were opposed in the case by Frontier, United Illuminating, the wireless and cable television industries, and the state Public Utilities Regulatory Authority.