Marsha Blackburn: On Municipal Broadband

Ms. Blackburn issued this press release recently. I'd like to ask the Congresswoman to clarify something. You are defending the states' rights, yes. But which rights, specifically? The rights to override the will of the people of a city or town? You claim to be in favor of small, local government. Yet the policies you are defending seem inconsistent with this. You are, in fact, defending the power of central government over local, and using the power of an even more remote government to do it.

I'd like to better understand how this is consistent. Why is it acceptable for the states to dictate terms to the people of their cities? I understand the legal structures are different, but that's a technicality and a cop-out. As a matter of principle, why should a remote central government be able to override the will of a local government in this one case, but not in others?

Please understand, I'm neither Republican nor Democrat, neither conservative nor liberal. Others may put me in such boxes, but when it comes to politics, I'm simply an engineer. I want things to work, I want to fix broken things. And like any observer, I can tell you that our broadband market is broken. Internet speeds in Tennessee are slow, service is abusive, and there is no market of competition to drive innovation. This map shows that the majority of the state doesn't even have two broadband options; you need far more than that to drive a free market! Further, Comcast is a clear example of regulatory capture and the continuous legalized bribery of our elected officials. We live in a government-sponsored monopoly, not a free market.

So if we live in a government-sponsored monopoly, what's so wrong with admitting that, and doing it right? It's what we do with every other utility, and they operate quite well. Several municipalities in Tennessee built local fiber networks before 2008, when the state legislature was 'lobbied' into making building such networks much harder. All these networks provide vastly better speeds than the state or national average. Some are among the fastest in the country, literally a hundred times faster than the rest of the state, and remain a point of technological pride for our state.

In short, municipal broadband works. Or at least it has some hope of working. It's perfectly clear that our current corporate ISPs don't, and never will.

So I have to ask, Ms. Blackburn, why are you fighting so hard to maintain the status quo? Right now, most of our state is locked into an unresponsive, dysfunctional monopoly, with no hope of competition to improve our lot. Those cities that have acted to improve the situation have succeeded; their citizens have better lives and more options. Yet your actions work to lock us into the same dysfunctional system. Why? What matter of principle could possibly justify such a hurtful act towards the people you were elected to serve? It's clearly not about central government vs. local government, we've established that already.

So what is it? Even if your constituents don't deserve modern utilities, they at least deserve an answer from you on this.