President: FCC Should Push Back on State Laws Limiting Broadband

In a speech in Cedar Falls, Iowa, where a community broadband network, with the help of government funding, delivers 1 gigabit speed service at a bout the same price as the cable bundle, President Obama told a crowd of sometimes cheering Iowans that there was not enough competition to ISPs that continued to "jack up" rates and that the government should try to encourage municipal competitors to fill that breach.

Backed by a tool board filled with pliers, hammers and other not-quite-digital age appliances, the President talked about promoting community broadband as a way to provide competition, competition he suggested was notably lacking.

He did not have encouraging words for the incumbent ISP's who have pointed out they spent hundreds of billions of dollars building out their networks and boosting their speeds.

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John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.