Biden Proposes Government Actually Try to Create Broadband Competition
Doug Seacat, founder of the Ridgway, Colorado–based IT consulting company Deeply Digital, got a call several years ago from one of his biggest clients. CenturyLink, the only internet service provider in the region, initially said it could provide him a high-speed fiber connection, but then decided it couldn’t.
Though Deeply Digital wasn’t in the fiber business at the time, Seacat decided to run a fiber line for his client. That was the spark for a new company, Clearnetworx, which would offer fiber and wireless internet service in an area where poor internet connectivity was the norm. He wanted Clearnetworx to connect the entire 1,000-person town of Ridgway. What he didn’t consider was that state broadband programs are focused more on protecting incumbent providers.
Small towns on Colorado’s Western Slope face high costs to build the local network and interconnect it to the larger internet. They also don’t contain enough population to make a startup broadband provider’s business model work without some kind of subsidy. Colorado had created just such a program.
Seacat’s team worked deep into the night filling out the necessary paperwork to be considered for a $1 million grant. They were thrilled to be informed they were awarded it, until they ran into a buzz saw embedded in government bureaucracy known as the “right of first refusal.” That gives existing providers an opportunity to veto potential competition, and to our knowledge, every state with a broadband grant program has one.
Read more: https://prospect.org/economy/biden-proposes-government-create-broadband-competition/
(American Prospect)
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