Why Are There No Big Cities with Municipal Broadband Networks?

Some larger metros are starting to flirt with the idea of municipal broadband with public-private partnerships.

"Seattle and Chicago are looking around and basically saying, 'If we’re the last ones to get really high-quality access to the Internet, then we’re really going to be screwed,'" says Christopher Mitchell, who directs the Telecommunications as Commons Initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. So why aren’t big cities like Seattle, Chicago or Philadelphia already in this game when 340 smaller communities are? "I feel like big cities have this arrogance," Mitchell says. "They thought, 'We’re so great, we are so cosmopolitan.' They never thought they’d have to worry about competing with Chattanooga over jobs." For the most part, cities have been better served by telecom giants than many smaller communities (although there are plenty of urban pockets with poor Internet service). Big cities haven’t been forced to build their own networks in the way some rural mountain towns have. But Mitchell also chocks up the difference to what he calls “a matter of sociology:” namely, that there’s a lot less trust in government and connection to elected officials in large cities, a necessary ingredient when you’re talking about building an entirely new public utility. In Tennessee, on the other hand, most households have been familiar with the notion of government-run utilities since the construction of the TVA.