The Phone Company*
Let’s look at Maine, where the terminally incompetent telco Farpoint is aggressively lobbying against Maine accepting a $24.5 million grant from the federal government to build out broadband networks:
Last month, NTIA gave Great Works internet in Maine $24.5 million toward a fiber optic network. The grant is a classic public/private partnership for a middle mile project that includes, among others the University of Maine.
Fairpoint, Maine’s primary rural LEC, has objected to this “undue competition with the private sector.” This would be funny, given how Fairpoint has become the poster child for the failure of the private sector to deliver on its big promises to rural communities. But Fairpoint’s talking points have ended up in legislation filed by Maine State Senator Lisa Marrache (D-Waterville) and Maine State Rep. Stacey Fitts (R-Pittsfield). Despite the fact that middle mile build out will help companies like Fairpoint (while also helping their competitors), we get the usual ideologically-driven nonsense about how the public sector ought to know its place and leave the driving to the all-knowing and super-efficient firms like Fairpoint — assuming Maine’s rural residents like the prospect of waiting for a bankrupt company [Yes, literally. Farpoint went Chapter 11] to satisfy its creditors and bring them broadband.
While this money would improve access and service for everyone, it would make it easier for companies to compete against Farpoint, the incumbent, so they are fighting this tooth and nail, because their service has been so unbelievably horrible that they know that they will hemorrhage customers if anything near free and fair.
That’s what this is all about.
There is more money in locking out competitors than there is in improving service, so US broad band, driven by private interests, is slower, more expensive, less reliable, and less accountable.
Damn, sounds a lot like out healthcare system.