Senate Candidates in Tennessee Differ on Bringing Internet to Rural Areas

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House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) said she thinks Tennessee's approach to providing high-speed Internet and broadband services to rural areas "has worked well in our state" and she reiterated her opposition to having government utilities like EPB expand outside their territories to compete with AT&T, Comcast and other private telecom companies. The issue that has been fought over at the Federal Communications Commision and the TN Legislature for the past three years has resurfaced in the 2018 US Senate election race between Blackburn and her Democratic opponent, former Gov Phil Bredesen (D-TN). Bredesen wants the Tennessee Valley Authority, which helped electrify rural TN in the 1930s, to expand into broadband service to ensure that the entire Tennessee Valley gets high-speed internet access. Bredesen said he would favor changing the TVA Act to enable TVA to expand into telecommunications and he even voiced support for providing federal subsidies to ensure more Tennesseans have access to broadband services, which he said are essential for education, commerce and medical care. But Chairman Blackburn said bigger government is not the solution to America's problems. "We cannot turn broadband expansion over to the government, " she said earlier in 2018. "Doing so would create a monopoly and raise taxes, all while drawing the process out."


Blackburn opposes government-run broadband; Bredesen wants TVA to expand into broadband service