Change the law

Marathon County Broadband Task Force chairman John Robinson, a Wausau supervisor, told the Western Towns and Villages Association on Thursday that the county is making only limited progress on improving rural internet access largely due to state law.

We have a suggestion. Change the law.

Wisconsin is one of 18 states in the nation that prohibits local governments from providing broadband services to consumers and, while such a hands-off, free market approach might have worked to bring broadband to the state’s cities and villages, that same system has been slow to provide town residents with high speed internet.

The state’s law, crafted in 2003, makes it hard for governments, including counties, to bring internet to rural citizens. State law says local government can install broadband infrastructure, but it can’t “provide broadband to end users” and it can’t “compete with more than one provider of broadband service.” Any local government that would attempt to provide its citizens with internet must hold a cumbersome public hearing.

Collectively, these laws have kept high speed broadband out of rural areas. The Federal Communications Commission reports there are more than 430,000 people in rural Wisconsin who lack highspeed internet. That number, which represents a quarter of all rural Wisconsin residents, likely understates the issue. We’d say the reality is more like something we find in Marathon School District, where, according to a survey, half of parents say they “have internet” but lack the bandwidth to livestream classes to students in quarantine.

Both Gov. Tony Evers and Republicans in the legislature are promising to spend hundreds of millions of federal dollars to bring the internet to country homes. This bidding war is music to our ears, but we’re afraid spending this money won’t alone change the rural broadband reality. The state needs to give local governments the ability to offer high speed internet in situations where the private sector, even with grants, won’t extend service.

Robinson told town officials the county considered building a $35 million fiber loop and 10 tower system to improve rural broadband, but local internet service providers refused to rent the county’s infrastructure, killing the project. This has to change. We probably don’t need the county providing internet service to residents, but we surely need this option in the public’s back pocket to convince local private providers they need to take advantage of government-funded towers and fiber to serve low-profit, hard-to-reach rural customers.

There are legislators who want to help. State Sen. Jeff Smith (D-Eau Claire) has introduced a bundle of broadband bills, including a proposal to kill the ban on local government internet, and the plan has been included in Gov. Evers’ state budget. At the federal level, Sen. Amy Klobachar (D-Minn.) has introduced legislation, The Accessible, Affordable Internet for All Act, that would preempt all state laws and permit local governments to serve broadband customers, if that’s what local people want.

The COVID-19 pandemic has taught us all that broadband, perhaps an urban luxury in the past, is now essential to modern living both in the city and the country. In an age where copper wires installed for landline telephones are no longer reliable, a broadband connection to county dispatch can be a lifesaver in an emergency. Better broadband is something we want, something we need.

We don’t expect robust internet across rural Marathon County — from Jerkwater to Schnappsville to Nutterville to Hatley — in the snap of a finger, but we can’t wait decades either for a slowmoving private sector to make it happen.

We appreciate the county’s Broadband Task Force’s efforts, but recognize, too, that the state probably needs to modernize some laws in order to make rural broadband a reality. And, if for some reason, state government can’t move rural broadband forward, we turn to the federal government to make it happen.

Editorial by Peter Weinschenk, The Record-Review