Bills limiting broadband move forward in Missouri and Tennessee Legislatures

Broadband planners and supporters in Missouri and Tennessee say that legislative battles for publicly owned broadband have reached the tipping point this week.  In Missouri, a bill that would prohibit municipalities from running broadband networks passed out of the State Senate Jobs, Economic Development, and Local Government Committee into the full Senate for debate. State Senator Ed Emery initiated Senate Bill 186 in January. In Tennessee, several competing bills are in play, including one touted as a compromise that keeps the ban on municipal networks while allowing co-ops to offer broadband under certain conditions. Other proposals would remove municipal broadband limitations completely. On Wednesday, March, 8, the Tennessee bill was amended with the governor’s cooperation to allow co-ops to provide video. The original bill prevented co-ops from providing voice or video over any broadband networks they built. The last-minute change indicates that the wording of the bill is still open to negotiation — either to favor municipalities or to favor the positions of large telecommunications corporations that oppose the measure. In 2016, for example, when the Legislature was on the brink of removing municipal broadband restrictions entirely, AT&T forestalled the vote by helping push through a measure to study the issue for another year. Rural broadband advocates tout municipal and co-op broadband as one method of improving broadband service for rural consumers, where commercial providers have been reluctant to invest. With municipal broadband, local governments help build out, manage, or underwrite costs of the network. Power co-operatives are membership entities managed by an elected board of directors.