How cities can navigate their state’s broadband preemption laws

When state preemption laws on municipal broadband expansion are too restrictive, local leaders should learn how to work around bureaucratic red tape so they can deliver critical internet access to their communities, says Christy Baker-Smith, a director of research and data at the National League of Cities (NLC). State-level legislative restrictions can exacerbate local digital divides and resident burdens, said Baker-Smith. Plus, they can cause cities to lose out on federal funding. Advocates of what NLC calls municipal broadband preemption say the practice may help standardize policy and program implementation across jurisdictions within a state, but, according to Baker-Smith, “the problem is … cities in rural areas and urban areas need very different things, so [the state should] let the cities decide what they need.” One way cities can manage state prohibitions is by partnering with privately owned internet providers, which is already a requirement for municipal broadband expansion in a few states. However, creating those partnerships could prove difficult as many companies forgo providing services in certain areas, such as rural communities, because there is little financial motivation to do so. For instance, cities can advocate that their use of federal funds could help cover a company’s cost to expand broadband infrastructure by upgrading a cellphone tower from 4G to 5G capabilities, she said. That upgrade would not only benefit the local area but it would also attract additional customers that would have otherwise been unreachable by the broadband provider.