Your Bad Internet Connection Just Became a Campaign Issue
Elizabeth Warren announced a new proposal to fight against the stranglehold telecoms have on broadband access
Broadband is a subject that usually gets passing lip service during election season, only to be completely forgotten once the ballots are counted. But somebody forgot to tell Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren that.
In a Medium post, Warren this week outlined her plan to finally bring U.S. broadband out from under the thumb of mediocrity. The extensive plan proposes spending $85 billion (funded by a higher tax rate on the nation’s biggest corporations) to bring broadband to the 26% of rural Americans who are still left without high speed internet service.
Buried in Warren’s plan to fix the broken U.S. broadband market was another overlooked proposal: letting your town or city build its own broadband network.
Frustrated by high prices and terrible service, more than 750 communities across the United States have built some variety of locally-operated network. Studies show these networks offer faster, cheaper service than the private sector, and one such network, Chattanooga’s EPB, was rated the best internet service provider (ISP) in America last year by Consumer Reports.
