Why is New York City Removing Free Broadband In Favor of Charter?

In January 2020, former-Mayor Bill de Blasio (D-NY) announced New York City’s Internet Master Plan, setting a path to deliver broadband for low-income New Yorkers by investing in public fiber infrastructure. Shortly after the announcement by Mayor de Blasio, the COVID-19 pandemic hit and made the need for public fiber in low-income areas greater than ever before. In response, former union workers at Spectrum opted to build their own broadband cooperative called People’s Choice Communications, to deliver free high-speed access. But since the election of Mayor Eric Adams (D-NY), this critical progress has not only come to a halt, but it is also now actively being undermined, to the benefit of large cable corporations. Instead of pursuing long-term solutions to low-income access, as outlined by the Internet Master Plan, Mayor Adams has abandoned that plan. Now, the Adams administration is pushing an extraordinarily wasteful proposal dubbed “Big Apple Connect,” that literally just hands money over to cable companies. The original NYC proposal would have created the infrastructure that can lead to the creation of more local solutions like People’s Choice Communications. This would both create competition and drive down prices for everyone, as new entrants enter the market delivering gigabit-level connectivity. Now we know that the Adams administration is actively dismantling equipment that People's Choice Cooperative installed in public housing to make space for expensive, subsidized cable. The existence of a free, unsubsidized connection would not only embarrassingly raise questions about the Big Apple Connect program’s entire premise, but also threaten the cable monopoly of high prices for inferior speeds across the country.