Two states were successful in repealing their municipal broadband bans, bringing our tally down to 22 states from 25 states identified in our 2019 report. Those law changes are significant, and may portend similar measures being considered across states in the coming years.
Missouri is an agricultural sate, with farms covering two-thirds of the sate’s total land acreage,supporting an $88 billion industry. The sate’s large rural areas lack access to high-speed broadband. According to the FCC’s 2019 Broadband Deployment Progress Report, over half of Missouri residents in rural areas of the sate lack access to broadband at speeds of 25 Mbps down and 3 Mbps up. The sate ranks 42nd in the nation for broadband connectivity, with over a million residents lacking any access to high-speed internet.
One of Congress’s purposes in passing the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was to encourage the widespread deployment of broadband Internet. As municipalities began constructing their own broadband networks, private sec-tor Internet service providers, alarmed at the prospect of competing with these public networks, pushed back with lobbying campaigns encouraging states to enact laws prohibiting these municipal networks.
THIS IRU AGREEMENT (“Agreement”) is made, entered into, and effective as of the 28th day of September, 2001, by and between McLeodUSA Telecommunications Services, Inc. an Iowa corporation (“McLeodUSA”) and Norlight Telecommunications, Inc., a Wisconsin corporation (“IRU Grantee”).
Search the different bills for each state to access the Bill Summary and Issue Area.
With roughly 9 out of 10 adults in America using the internet, many consider it to be a necessity of modern life. Because access to the internet is unavailable or inadequate in parts of the country, states and the federal government are focusing on deploying broadband—the technologies that allow internet data to be transmitted at high speeds—as universally as possible.
Effective 2018, statute specifically authorizes rural electric cooperatives and their affiliates to offer broadband service and to enter into cooperative arrangements for that purpose.
Subsection 7 sets forth prohibitions and exceptions for political subdivisions and related entities seeking to offer telecommunications services.
This bill allows for neighborhood and community improvement districts to partner with telecommunication company’s or broadband providers to construct or improve telecommunications facilities that are in an unserved or underserved area (service less than 25/3) as certified by the DED office of Broadband. The Bill also extends the grant making authority of the DED office of Broadband until 2027.
Full Report and Order from the FCC regarding Digital Opportunity Data Collection: “Accurate broadband deployment data is critical to the Commission’s efforts to bridge the digital divide. Effectively targeting federal and state spending efforts to bring broadband to those areas most in need of it means understanding where broadband is available and where it is not. The census-block level fixed broadband service availability reporting the Commission currently requires has been an effective tool for helping the Commission target universal service support to the least-served areas of the country, but has made it difficult for the Commission to direct funding to the “gaps” in broadband coverage—those areas where some, but not all, homes and businesses have access to modern communications services.”
Moving to better identify gaps in broadband coverage across the nation, the Federal Communications Commission today initiated a new process for collecting fixed broadband data to better pinpoint where broadband service is lacking. Today’s Report and Order and Second Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking concludes that there is a compelling and immediate need to develop more granular broadband deployment data to meet this goal, and accordingly, creates the new Digital Opportunity Data Collection.