US providers ask to ban the development of municipal high-speed Internet

According to the Guardian publication, the USTelecom association of telecom providers (including AT&T, for example) asked the Federal Communications Commission to block the plans of the authorities in Chattanooga (Tennessee) and Wilson (North Carolina) for the development of municipal high-speed access networks.

Representatives of the providers noted that they care about the money of taxpayers - in their opinion, municipal networks are expensive, but they do not always work very well.

Municipal networks have not proved their effectiveness [...], so it’s completely reasonable to limit or completely prohibit such activity.

At the same time, the Chattanooga network is one of the fastest in the USA - its users can connect to the Internet at a speed of 1 gigabit per second, which is about 50 times faster than the national average. Access to the network is provided by the city-owned company EPB - this project has attracted great attention throughout the country. Currently, the company’s management has appealed to the Liaison Commission with a request to expand the area of ​​its activity - Internet providers led by Comcast previously unsuccessfully tried through the court to ban EPB from using fiber-optic transmission lines.

In the small town of Wilson (with a population of 49,000 people), the Greenlight municipal high-speed access service was also launched - the low tariffs of the city-owned company forcedTime Warner lower their prices. The corporation later tried to outlaw Greenlight's work through the courts.



The parent company EPB is also engaged in power supply.

The USTelecom Association says that such projects should be under great control, in particular, in some states, public hearings are necessary for the development of new networks, and in some, the possibilities for reducing tariffs are limited. Providers are asking to apply existing restrictions in order to protect users of municipal networks from the risk of encountering an inadequate level of service.

The press service of the municipal provider of the city of Chattanooga EPB The Guardian announced that the residents of each city should have the opportunity to choose the method of obtaining a high-speed connection.

Private companies do not think about all users without exception, but city-owned companies like EPB were originally created to provide access to critical infrastructure to everyone.

The Federal Communications Commission previously urged Internet providers to participate in a special contest Gigabit City Challenge, in which each of the 50 US states in 2015 should see at least one location, with access to the network at a speed of 1 gigabit. Following the announcement of the launch of the contest, many online media outlets stated that it was an attempt by the Commission to slow down the development of high-speed services of the cities themselves and new market players like Google with its Fiber .