Community-Owned Broadband Network Again Tops List Of Most Popular ISPs

Broadband

from the community-broadband-is-good dept

For two decades, frustrated towns and cities all over the country have responded to telecom monopolies by building their own fiber broadband networks. Data routinely shows that not only do these networks provide faster, better, and cheaper service, the networks are generally more accountable to the public — because they’re directly owned and staffed by locals with a vested interest in the community.

And despite industry lobbyist efforts to paint these networks as some kind of socialist boondoggle hellscape, locally owned community ISPs continue to be extremely popular. Last week, PC Magazine ranked all broadband ISPs, noting that the most popular ISP in the country is Nextlight, owned by the town of Longmont, Colorado:

The town of Longmont, Colorado, took broadband into its own hands and launched NextLight. The community made the right decision. NextLight is not only the overall top ISP this year, but it also earns stellar scores unlike any we’ve seen before in any category for Readers’ Choice.

Funny how that works. For decades, telecom giants and the politicians, think tankers, lobbyists, academics, and consultants paid to love them insisted that such networks were a dangerous socialist hellscape, doomed to failure. In reality, they’re a popular, grass roots, organic local response to decades of shitty broadband foisted upon them by monopolies and the corrupt politicians that protect them.

When you look at the overall ratings of Longmont compared to big ISPs like Comcast (Xfinity) or Charter (Spectrum), it’s not even a fair fight:

Longmont, you may or may not recall, faced no limit of sleazy industry smear campaigns designed to try and scare locals away from the idea of locally owned broadband. Big ISPs like Comcast and AT&T even managed to buy a state law attempting to effectively ban such networks. It didn’t work: decades of consumer anger recently resulted in the state repealing the 2005 law completely.

Federal government has routinely proven too corrupt to meaningfully challenge concentrated telecom monopoly power. Not just because these companies are politically powerful campaign contributors, but because they’re effectively now part of the federal government, whether we’re talking about their trusted role in domestic surveillance, or their integration into first responder systems.

So after decades of annoyance at high prices, slow speeds, spotty availability, and statistically some of the worst customer service of any business sector in America, communities decided to build their own, better networks. At any point in this trend entrenched giants could have responded by offering cheaper, better service, but it was much cheaper to buy politicians and state laws or file lawsuits.

As our recent Copia study on how to fix U.S. broadband shows, these locally owned networks take many forms, whether it’s the local city-owned utility, a direct municipal network, a cooperative, or a public-private partnership. Such networks (especially when open access) provide a direct, hugely beneficial alternative to forty years of failed, monopoly coddling federal policies. And they’re popular as hell.

Filed Under: colorado, community broadband, competition, longmont, municipal broadband
Companies: nextlight