Municipal Responses to State-Level Broadband Internet Policy

Abstract

Since 2004 policy makers at the state level have been proposing legislation to prevent local municipalities from developing or deploying some form of broadband Internet infrastructure. As of June 2006, 35 states have addressed the municipal broadband issue in some way. Many of the bills that have passed have done so through amendment and compromise. Many of the bills that have died in committee have failed to pass because of the failure of legislators, private providers and municipalities to compromise. We have compiled a database of all municipal wireless initiatives in the United States. As of June 2006, we have a total of 357 entries. We have queried every state in which legislation has been passed or is pending regarding municipal wireless initiatives. Drawing from one subsection of fields from the database, we have compiled the statuses of all cities within those states concerning their efforts to build municipal wireless broadband networks. In this paper, we present a typology of five municipal responses to this legislation.