Who Should Decide? States' Rights, Local Authority and the Future of the Internet

[Commentary] In a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler, 60 Republicans insisted that the federal government shouldn't interfere with the 20 state laws that either prohibit or severely inhibit municipally owned broadband networks.

The debate about whether to build a muni broadband network has proven to be one of the most considered, transparent and democratic of all policy debates, certainly far more considered than those made in Washington and state capitols. Republicans and private telecoms maintain that cities lack the capacity to build and manage broadband networks.

They're empirically wrong. Of the 160 municipally owned broadband networks, the successes vastly outnumber the failures. Muni networks, not Google, offered the first gigabit service. Muni networks have saved their communities hundreds of millions of dollars, created tens of thousands of jobs, and become a firm foundation for economic-development initiatives.

[Morris is Director, The Public Good Initiative, Institute for Local Self-Reliance]