Tearing down anti-muni broadband barriers in 2015?

Building the Gigabit City

I’m going to go out on a limb and make a couple of New Year’s predictions, a practice I’ve always avoided like the plague. But after my research for my latest Community Broadband Snapshot Report that addresses state legislative barriers to public-owned broadband, I feel pretty confident about this.

First, I predict there will be a surge of effort to counter the impact of current state laws that prevent municipalities and public utilities from building or expanding their broadband networks. Second, there will be a number of legislative bodies that, at the behest of giant telco and cable company lobbyists, will try to add new restrictive laws to the books, which I expect will be met with fierce opposition.

If-Then Laws	Minefield Laws	Total Bans
Alabama	Florida	Arkansas
California	Louisiana	Missouri
Colorado	N. Carolina	Montana
Iowa	S. Carolina	Nebraska
Michigan	Utah	Tennessee
Minnesota	Virginia
Nevada
Pennsylvania
Washington
Wisconsin