Ellis Scherer
Introduction
Local government officials are often taken in by the allure of government-owned broadband networks (GONs) when told by activists or consultants that they are superior to relying on private providers. While a GON could be the least bad option if no private providers are willing to invest, build, and operate, GONs are typically a suboptimal choice.
Comparisons between GONs and private Internet service providers (ISPs) are often asymmetric—overlooking favoritism toward GONs and hostility to private deployment. From a policy perspective, such a skewed comparison is unhelpful in finding the best way to connect consumers and efficiently use national resources. Instead, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) under President-elect Trump should push policymakers to conduct an unbiased evaluation of the relative merits of both options. It is faulty reasoning to leap from the importance of broadband or animosity toward private ISPs to an assumption that a local government could do a better job for consumers. As much as local officials might like a car factory, they don’t get into that business because they know they have neither the competence nor the scale to do it efficiently. The same is usually true with broadband.
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