In a recent article, “Tell The Story We Know: Broadband Competition is Too Limited,” Jonathan Sallet laid out the case for robust broadband competition as a necessary step in expanding high-quality connectivity nationwide. “Academic research tells us that more broadband competition matters: pushing rivals to up their game, saving money for consumers, increasing the quality of service,” explained Sallet, a current Benton Institute Senior Fellow and former General Counsel at the Federal Communications Commission.
The article, co-published by the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society and the Coalition for Local Internet Choice, identified greater broadband competition as one of the four “building blocks” needed to reach the goal of connecting all Americans to modern Internet access by 2030. Sallet has expanded on this goal in the report, Broadband for America’s Future: A Vision for the 2020s, which we covered last year. In addition to creating more Internet choice, the report cited the need for continued efforts to deploy broadband infrastructure, increase affordability and adoption, and connect community anchor institutions.
Communities Crave Competition
It’s not a secret that greater broadband competition lowers prices and improves service quality. For example, the municipal fiber networks in Wilson, North Carolina, and Chattanooga, Tennessee, have kept incumbent providers’ rates low even as speeds increased. “By the FCC’s calculation, new competition saved Wilson’s approximately 50,000 residents more than $1 million per year,” Sallet noted in the article.
However, as he pointed out, other communities are much more likely to live under a broadband monopoly or duopoly — and to pay dearly for it. “We can expect people with only one choice to pay monopoly prices,” he wrote, “and people with only two choices to pay the higher...
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