Heartland Institute Reacts to Proponents of Municipal Broadband

On April 11, three liberal advocacy groups released two new reports claiming to make a case for allowing local governments to build broadband networks in competition with private companies and nonprofit organizations. The three advocacy groups are called the Media Access Project, Free Press, and Consumer Federation of America. Their reports are titled “Connecting the Public: The Truth About Municipal Broadband” and “Telco Lies and the Truth about Municipal Broadband Networks.”

The following statement can be attributed to Joseph Bast, president of The Heartland Institute, a national nonprofit organization based in Chicago, and author of two Heartland Policy Studies on municipal broadband.

Neither of these studies adds anything new to the debate over whether there is a genuine need for municipalities to get into the business of offering commercial broadband services. Instead, they simply repeat the rhetoric put forward by municipalities in the past.

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