What About Competition?

In comments made to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the recent docket looking at customer service practices, the California Public Utility Commission (CPUC) filed comments that said that big internet service providers (ISPs) don’t focus on customer service because they don’t have to. The CPUC said that only 26 percent of California residents have a choice between two fast ISPs. The federal government has been concentrating on making sure that homes have at least one fast option for broadband, and that’s an obviously good goal at a time when Internet access is considered by most households to be a necessity. But the numbers cited by the CPUC are not unusual. Across the country there are still a lot of places where homes and businesses have only one fast ISP option. There are real consequences for any neighborhood that has only one fast ISP. Such neighborhoods have no competitive options, and the one fast ISP is effectively a broadband monopoly in that community.