Telecom-Backed Papers Like This One Are How ISPs Rewrite America's Laws

[Commentary] A telecommunication-funded policy paper slamming local government-owned broadband networks published April 6 is masquerading as a serious “economic analysis,” but is yet another example of the dominant players in telecommunications manipulating the political system to suit their interests.

In the last couple years, there’s been a strong push by local municipalities to provide Gigabit fiber Internet connections for their residents, whether that means incentivizing a company like Google to come to their city, partnering with a startup Internet service provider, or building the entire network by themselves using taxpayer money. The “municipal-owned” broadband networks are the ones taken on by "The Impact of Government-Owned Broadband Networks on Private Investment and Consumer Welfare", and are, at least in theory, the ones that present the biggest threat to existing ISPs. There's no doubt that the paper will be used as a study to support telecom-written legislation that are passed to governors and state lawmakers as evidence that taxpayer-funded Internet services just don’t work.