House Energy & Commerce Committee Democrats have introduced a wide-ranging infrastructure bill that includes a $40 billion broadband component, $10 billion of which could trickle down to subsidizing deployment in underserved areas.

The LIFT America Act's investment in secure and resilient broadband is almost as much as the combined investments in drinking water ($22.56 billion), energy ($17 billion), healthcare ($3 billion) and "brownfields" ($2.7 billion) investments combined.

The Democrats say the bill will "spur new high-paying technology jobs by supporting deployment of smart buildings, smart grid, and Smart Communities technology. "

According to a breakout of the bill, the broadband investment is spread out over five years and will use a reverse auction to subsidize broadband in "unserved" areas (75% of the funds, or $30 billion), with the remaining 25% (that would be $10 billion) going to states via a separate reverse auction.

But if there are no unserved areas in a state, that state could use the funds to serve underserved areas--or as ISPs see it, overbuild existing service--or for connecting libraries and schools or to deploy next gen 911.

The $30 billion would have to go to private entities, but some of the $10 billion could go to governments for 911. (This story initially said that money could go to municipal broadband buildouts, but that was incorrect).

The broadband will have to be high-speed--at least 100 Mbps downstream, and 3 Mbps up, with a carveout for remote areas, where 25 Mbps/3 mbps would qualify, and cost no more than $60 per month for residential service exclusive of taxes and fees. 

Given that it has money for potential overbuilds, both of which the reigning Republican majority has issues with--as do ISPs--the bill's prospects are probably not very bright.

“We appreciate this latest contribution to the evolving debate regarding how best to promote access to broadband,” said Shirley Bloomfield, CEO of NTCA The Rural Broadband Association. “While we’re still reviewing the details of this most recent proposal, its introduction and the amount of resources indicated reflect a clear recognition of the importance of broadband as a national infrastructure priority. The ultimate touchstones in any infrastructure discussion must be both how we can build these assets in the first instance and—especially in high-cost rural areas, where the ongoing operation of a network is itself a substantial undertaking—how we can make sure these investments are sustainable for the benefit of the consumers and businesses that depend upon them.”

The Republican sponsor of a bill to put conditions on municipal broadband buildouts in Virginia has recrafted the bill after Governor Terry McAuliffe said he would veto it, according to a group opposing the bill.

The bill — introduced in the Virginia assembly two weeks ago — would allow for municipal buildouts but only if they target unserved areas, which it defines as those where the average broadband speed is less than 10 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up.

It would also require an independent study to identify unserved areas before any buildouts and would put conditions on overbuilding of any existing service at any speed.

A municipality would also have to provide access to rights of way on a first-come, first-serve basis to commercial providers and could not cross-subsidize its broadband with regulated utility money.

The Institute for Local Self-Reliance, which backs municipal broadband buildouts, said the revised bill still does nothing to help connect rural Virginia, adding that while the bill would allow for buildouts, it would also offer a way for "big cable companies" to limit broadband competition in the state.

"The bill still gives an edge to private providers by ensuring municipal actors must share their trade secrets," said the group. "It also opens up local governments to lawsuits for perceived service issues as well as limiting private investment in Internet connectivity. These restrictions functionally ensure that it is impossible for municipal networks to develop and offer competition to the cable monopolies."

Bill backers, including ISPs, have argued that the bill would ensure that the buildouts, and taxpayer dollars, are targeted to where the service is needed, rather than being used to subsidize overbuilds of existing private providers.

A federal court might have blocked the Federal Communications Commission’s efforts to promote municipal broadband by pre-empting state laws restricting it in North Carolina and Tennessee, but more than two dozen Colorado communities — including Aspen — will look to the ballot box on Tuesday (Nov. 8) to do their own mini-pre-empting.

Colorado state law holds that, “in the interests of uniformity of service,” no local government can provide cable or telecom services, either directly or via a joint venture or a leaseback arrangement, unless no commercial operator provides service anywhere in the municipality or does not agree to do so when asked — or if the voters say the government can, via a ballot initiative aimed at opting out of that Colorado law, known as SB 152.

If these latest initiatives pass, it will make nearly 100 Colorado communities that have “restored” their ability to provide Internet access, according to the Institute for Self-Reliance, a D.C.-based group pushing muni broadband.

“The question continues to be who should decide these matters,” Christopher Mitchell, director of community broadband networks at the institute, said. “We believe the decision should be made at the local level, where people have to live with the consequences of either action or inaction. The big cable and telephone companies prefer to outlaw it from the state capitals, where their lobbyists are more influential and local voices are easier to drown out.”

Those big companies argue that government winds up unfairly subsidizing competition to existing service and can leave taxpayers holding the bag if muni broadband efforts fail.

As to the court keeping the FCC from lending a hand, Mitchell said, “The 6th Circuit decision wasn’t so much a shot against municipal networks as it was the court saying that even though the FCC’s record demonstrating that municipal networks improve Internet access, the battle is still in the states over where and how to allow it.”

Cable Consolidation Unites ACC With CTAM

The Association of Cable Communicators — known as the Cable Television Public Affairs Association for its first 22 years of existence, from 1985 to 2006 — is folding into CTAM (the marketing-focused professional association) later this year.

ACC will go away, but CTAM will take on the work of supporting public-relations staffers at cable providers and programmers. And programs like the Beacon Awards for public-affairs campaigns will continue: 45 awards were handed out this past June, including the Golden Beacon saluting MTV Networks’ Transgender Awareness Week.

Consolidation, especially among big cable providers, had eroded the ACC membership base over time, as had factors including the spread of statewide franchises that led to fewer public-affairs staffers at operators around the country, ACC activists (including fulltime executive director Steve Jones) noted.

From a peak of perhaps 700 individual members, Jones said, the organization now has around half that number.

It’s interesting to note, though, that CTPAA could have launched initially as an arm of CTAM, as former president Andy Holdgate noted in a history of the group’s first two decades.

CTAM has always closely with CTPAA and ACC, so it was perhaps an inevitable outcome, though it took more than three decades to get there. CTAM CEO Vicki Lins told The Wire last week she saw the new union as “two halves coming together to form a greater whole.”

Both organizations’ boards voted unanimously to combine, though it will take a while to sort out the final details.

— Kent Gibbons

WASHINGTON — With Donald Trump’s Republican presidential campaign limping into the final stretch, kneecapped by multiple allegations of sexual misconduct and claims of conspiracy and election fraud, it is looking increasingly like Democrat Hillary Clinton’s administration will be the one putting the new stamp on communications policy.

Clinton championed network neutrality as secretary of state; strong network neutrality rules as a U.S. senator from New York; is on the record as supporting municipal broadband buildouts; and has talked the same talk as President Obama about the importance of universal broadband access.

MERGER HAWK?

Clinton could be tougher on mergers than the Obama Federal Communications Commission and Justice Department, which allowed the Comcast-NBCUniversal, DirecTV-AT&T and Charter Communications-Time Warner Cable (and Bright House Networks) mergers, though not without conditions that Republicans branded onerous.

In an October 2015 interview with Website qz.com, Clinton said she would beef up antitrust enforcement at DOJ and the Federal Trade Commission: “I will direct more resources to hire aggressive regulators who will conduct in-depth industry research to better understand the link between market consolidation and stagnating incomes. Ultimately, this will foster a change in corporate culture that restores competition to the marketplace.”

The first woman president would have a number of like candidates for the FCC chairmanship, though the honor of first woman to chair the commission has already been taken by Mignon Clyburn in the interim between Julius Genachowski and Tom Wheeler.

According to various sources, Susan Ness and Karen Kornbluh could be in the running for FCC chairman under Clinton. If the post does not go to a woman, Blair Levin — a former top FCC official and architect of the National Broadband Plan and its spectrum auction — is another name that has surfaced more than once over the years for that job.

It is not yet clear who would be working on the telecom transition team: Wheeler was a key figure on Obama’s team.

One Democratic source who spoke on background said Ed Meier, who worked on tech issues for the campaign and is on the team, could take a lead role. Levin could also lend a hand and John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, would almost certainly have input.

On the FCC front, Ness is a former commissioner who has made no secret of her willingness to step into the breach, according to various industry sources. Kornbluh also has a resume that dovetails nicely with the job.

Kornbluh — Ambassador Kornbluh at that — is currently executive vice president for external affairs at Nielsen, but before that she was ambassador to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development under President Obama and served as his policy director when he was a senator. She also has a connection to the Clintons, having served in legislative affairs during Bill Clinton’s administration while at Treasury.

A Clinton administration would at least threaten some of the new money that has come into the political ad market since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed corporations and unions to fund more of those ads. Back in July, she released a video promising to put campaign finance reform at the top of her political agenda and proposed a constitutional amendment overturning the court’s Citizens United decision within the first 30 days of her administration. She also pledged to push for better disclosure of campaign funding.

BROADBAND POLICY

Clinton talked up broadband access and connection as secretary of state in a speech about global information access, which she likened to freedom of assembly. At least one public-interest group did not like the sound of her take on trying to shut down terrorist recruiting online.

She got a thumbs-down (actually a “frowny face”) in a 2016 voter guide from ’net activist group Free Press for this 2015 interview answer on fighting terrorism: “We have to deny them online space. And this is complicated. You’re going to hear all of the usual complaints, you know, freedom of speech, etc. But if we truly are in a war against terrorism and we are truly looking for ways to shut off their funding, shut off the flow of foreign fighters, then we’ve got to shut off their means of communicating.”

Free Press also points out that Clinton in 2015 wrote an op-ed piece in support of the FCC’s pre-emption of state laws limiting municipal broadband buildouts. But with a court reversing the FCC’s pre-emptions in Tennessee and North Carolina, and the Obama administration deciding not to appeal that decision, that effort would likely have to come through funding and championing municipal buildouts in states not trying to block them.

Phoenix Center chief economist George Ford has taken issue with a story in The Tennessean newspaper in which Chattanooga, Tenn., Mayor Andy Berke touted the economic benefits of its municipal fiber network.

A federal appeals court recently rejected the FCC's preemption of a Tennessee state law limiting the expansion of that city network, but the story preceded that decision and made no mention of it.

Related: FCC Releases Muni Pre-emption Order

The story noted that, over the past three years, "the city’s unemployment rate has dropped to 4.1% from 7.8%, and the wage rate has also been climbing," citing a speech by Berke to the Fiber to the Home Council Americas conference in June.

Berke is quoted in the story as saying the wage rate in Chattanooga is definitely linked to Internet-related jobs and the tech sector.

“Our fiber goes to each and every home,” the story quoted Berke as saying. “We can’t have digital gated communities. If we do that, and only allow fiber to go to some parts of the city, some parts of the state, we will see technology widen the gulf between people as opposed to bridging it."

But Ford, responding to the story via an op ed in The Tennessean, took issue with what he said was Berke's lead claim that "the city’s unemployment rate has dropped to 4.1% from 7.8%."

Ford pointed out that over the same period the nationwide unemployment rate had fallen from 7.5% to 4.7%, saying, "In terms of unemployment, Chattanooga isn’t much different than the nation as a whole.

"Unless the Chattanooga system is having nationwide economic impacts, it’s pretty clear that attributing the unemployment decline to a city broadband network is bogus," Ford said.

He said that looking at statewide unemployment rates, tying the rate drop to the muni broadband net is even more problematic.

"For those cities operating broadband networks, unemployment has fallen by an average of 4.0 points," he said, while "in cities without municipal systems, unemployment has fallen by 4.7 points."

The "interplay" of three pending FCC issues -- the "unlocked" set-top box proposal, privacy rules and "the ultimate resolution of  net neutrality -- is impeding cable industry development and improperly putting "a government imprimatur on the notion of competition," NCTA president/CEO Michael Powell said March 23 at the Free State Foundation’s Eighth Annual Telecom Policy Conference.

Expanding his criticism of several FCC initiatives, Powell cited the agency's "biases [towards] the development of tech companies" that "makes it possible for tech companies to invade our traditional areas" but prohibits cable firms from moving in  their direction. 

He singled out the recent privacy proposal that would affect Internet Service Providers (including cable operators) in different ways than it would impact content or application suppliers.

"Privacy is not controversial; it is the hypocritical inconsistency that is controversial," Powell said.  "You cannot describe that data collection and monetization is the justification for this level of rules while ignoring the fact that [similar actions] take place on every other platform that consumers use."

Powell challenged the FCC to find a way to differentiate "between the value of privacy and personalization" without taking a heavy-handed approach.

He also slammed the set-top box proceeding, saying that it "perfectly encapsulates government intervention."

"You cannot find one soul who doesn't recognize that there is no market that is shifting more than video delivery," Powell emphasized.  He said cable has lost 50% of its market share to new entrants, referring to telco TV and over-the-top operators. "This market is on fire."  He called the FCC's STB plan a "rent transfer" decision and an "unrestrained violation" of its role.

"All costs will be borne by customers," Powell said. He pointed out that the proposal will take at least five years to implement, "by which time the market will have changed."  The commission should not "pick winners and losers," Powell said.

His criticisms came during a panel of association executives discussing "Hot-Topic Communications Issues," part of a day-long program that included FCC commissioners Michael O'Rielly and Mignon Clyburn plus Federal Trade Commission member Maureen Ohlhausen. FSF's intent was to explore "the FCC and the rule of law," although many of the speakers focused on perceived abuses of power.

Even FCC general counsel Jonathan Sallet, in a conversation with FSF president Randolph May that was centered on procedural processes at the commission, conceded that "more direct conversations between commissioners would be a very helpful step."  Sallet, who recommended changes to sunshine laws "so that commissioners can deliberate," acknowledged that the FCC could use more input on many topics it is reviewing.

"Sometimes we know issues are in flux and we need to know more," he said.

Right-leaning FSF's agenda began with politicized rhetoric when keynoter Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.)  lambasted the FCC and singled out chairman Tom Wheeler as "a bull in a china shop."  Blackburn, vice chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and a member of its Communications and Technology Subcommittee, characterized the FCC staff as having "failed to exercise regulatory humility," citing its recent effort to oversee privacy, which she said is the FTC's responsibility.

"The FCC does not have the necessary expertise to oversee privacy," she said.  "It is arguing for a solution that is one-sided and focused only on one part of the Internet ecosystem."  

Blackburn also plowed into the issues of unlocked set-top boxes and municipal broadband, citing that Memphis "is $27 million in the hole" from its flirtation with such plans, and "the list of failures goes on and on."

"It's the government's job is to create an environment that encourages competition, not to create a system where the government is the competition," she said. "If the state decides to create broadband networks, so be it, but "the FCC has no right" to butt in.

As for the open STB issue -- which she referred to under the old "All-Vid" name -- Blackburn said, "Nashville content creators are absolutely baffled by what the FCC is trying to do." She contended that the FCC plan would encourage theft and could create conflict between FCC policy and business contracts between content producers and carriers.

"It has created a tremendous amount of confusion," Blackburn said.

"The FCC's decision-making has frustrated content makers, the telecom industry and policy makers," she concluded, emphasizing that telecom "has thrived under light-touch regulation."

Diplomatic Commissioners

FSF's May sought to explore possibilities for less politicization and more "collegiality" among FCC commissioners during his "fireside chat" with O'Rielly and Clyburn, with a series of "can't we all just get along" questions.  Both officials initially tried to be cordial.

O'Rielly: "I get along with my colleagues very well. ... I try not to let one issue color my feelings about the next one."

Clyburn: "My compass is serving the public interest. We're not in a vacuum." 

And then they got into specifics, where political polarization quickly emerged.  They disagreed on the STB plan.

"Words have meaning," O'Rielly said about the chairman's perception that software is part of the STB revision. "When Congress wrote 'equipment,' it didn't mean 'software.'"  The direction toward applications and software has nothing to do with the statute and is "problematic," he added.

Clyburn insisted that "Congress envisioned a robust marketplace...whatever the interface is."  She said that the plan is focused on "whether this is a non-competitive marketplace."

Similarly, on the privacy issue, O'Rielly pointed out that "our expertise, the number of people at the FCC working on privacy is small, compared with expertise at the FTC."  Clyburn said she doesn't use the word "duplicate" but rather focuses on "context," considering the two agencies' efforts "complementary."

"We work together to insure that expectations are met," Clyburn said.

And again when discussing the Open Internet situation, she emphasized "flexibility and innovation," while O'Rielly insisted, "You can never have certainty when you have no structure." 

"That's what the chairman created under the 'net neutrality rule," O'Rielly said.

They also sparred over proposals for "lifeline" services.  O'Rielly said he prefers "a hard budget rather than a [percentage] cap," while Clyburn insisted that the plan "removed duplicates, put in discipline and [provided] a lot of accountability."

The panel of association executives, which included (in addition to NCTA's Powell) CTIA president/CEO Meredith Baker; U.S. Telecom Association president/CEO Walter McCormick; NARUC general counsel Brad Ramsay; and Nicol Turner-Lee, VP of the Multicultural, Media, Telecom and Internet Council, continued the blast of the FCC rulemakings and its process.

Regarding muni cable, Ramsey said, "The FCC is telling the state what to do." He predicted if the Sixth Circuit appeals court in Cincinnati, which is reviewing challenges by Tennessee and North Carolina to the FCC's muni cable ruling, sides with the FCC,  the case is likely to go to the Supreme Court and it will be reversed.

McCormick focused on FCC decisions that are "slowing investment in the industry. "

"We've seen that in every year since the recession, there were increase in broadband investment up until Title II," he said, referring to the FCC's 2014 ruling to regulate broadband.  McCormick said that annual investment growth for the industry dropped from 9% to almost nothing, contending that the privacy issue has further muddied the financial market's view of telecom. He criticized FCC policies as thwarting "the full development of the telecom industry."

The CTIA's Baker focused on 5G (fifth generation) wireless as a "life-changing technology," calling it the "high-speed spectrum frontier." She emphasized the Internet of Things opportunities.

Most of the panelists were also critical of President Obama's intervention in the net -neutrality decision rulemaking which led to the now-contested Title II decision.

"It sets a bad precedent," Powell said. "Future administrations will use it as a precedent.  We might as well have a Secretary of Communications."

At an afternoon session wrapping up the "rule of law" theme, AT&T senior VP Robert Quinn promoted the value of a revision of the Communications Act.

"We have to go back to the drawing board," he said. "The Act really doesn't contemplate the kinds of things we're doing differently with the Internet.  We compete with everyone."

FSF's May said that this year's event was the best-attended conference in its eight years.

The Federal Communications Commission was in full release mode Thursday (March 12), following its online posting of the final Open Internet order with the final order on pre-empting Tennessee and North Carolina laws limiting municipal broadband. Both were adopted on straight, and contentious, party lines Feb. 26. ().

The FCC majority said the agency had the power and the duty to step in when states were limiting broadband buildouts. The commission confirmed it did not have the power to overturn state laws preventing municipal broadband buildouts, but if those states allows such networks, the FCC can pre-empt laws that would limit them.

FCC chairman Tom Wheeler has tabbed those laws as the handiwork of incumbent Internet service providers trying to prevent competition.

The order grants the petitions by the Electric Power Board of Chattanooga, Tenn., and the City of Wilson, N.C., "to pre-empt certain challenged provisions of Tennessee and North Carolina law restricting municipal provision of broadband service."

The pre-emption only applies to those two cities, but others are expected to follow suit, and Wheeler has conceded this decision provides guidance on what the FCC would do with similarly situated municipal networks.

"We conclude, contrary to the thrust of some commenter claims, that pre-emption will remove barriers to overall broadband investment and promote overall competition in Tennessee and North Carolina," the order states, adding: "We conclude that the Tennessee and North Carolina laws are barriers to broadband infrastructure investment and that pre-emption will promote competition in the telecommunications market by removing statutory barriers to such competition. In other words, we find that removal of such barriers would likely result in more overall broadband investment and competition. We next turn to considering our statutory authority to act."

The FCC is justifying the move under its Sec. 706 authority to regulate if it concludes that advanced telecommunications is not being deployed in a reasonable and timely manner, which it has concluded in its recent reports to Congress on the state of high-speed broadband. "We read section 706 to permit the commission to preempt state laws that primarily serve to regulate competition in the broadband market," the order states.

The order points out that the FCC has taken other pre-emption actions to further competition, including state laws on deployment of wireless facilities or restrictions on competitive cable franchises.

Critics of the decision have 30 days after publication of the just-released final order in the Federal Register to either petition the FCC to reconsider the decision or take it directly to court. Look for one or both to happen.

As expected, the Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 Thursday (Feb. 26) along party lines to pre-empt state laws in Tennessee and North Carolina that limit expansion of municipal broadband, citing its authority under the Sec. 706 mandate to insure advance telecommunications services are being deployed in a reasonable and timely manner.

The order pre-empts geographic limitations on the expansion of municipal broadband systems in Chattanooga, Tenn., and Wilson, N.C., though it does not compel any action on either. The decision does not affect laws in other states, but signals how the FCC might act on similar petitions, which are expected from other municipal broadband providers now that the FCC has fired this shot across the bow at state broadband laws.

The cities of Chattanooga and Wilson asked the FCC to pre-empt their limiting state laws, saying that without those restrictions, they are willing and able to expand their gigabit service to surrounding neighborhoods that had asked for it.

The state laws prevented expansion beyond the footprints of the utilities that are providing the broadband service, or as the FCC Wireline Bureau said, to a "sea of little or no" broadband options. The bureau said the decision was simply letting communities serve their neighbors.

The bureau pointed to the FCC's recent 706 finding that advanced telecom was not being deployed in a reasonable and timely manner, and the section's instructions to act immediately to try and rectify that.

Democratic Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, who enthusiastically supported the decision, likened municipal service to a broadband barn raising, an analogy that pleased FCC chairman Tom Wheeler. Commissioner Mignon Clyburn was also strongly supportive.

"Today’s vote seeks to draw a line in the sand once and for all by removing barriers to deployment and fostering competition consistent with the FCC’s core mission and values," Clyburn said.

"For scores of Americans the choice of one, let alone multiple broadband networks, is a dream deferred, and the promise of universal access remains un-kept," she added, leaving many in "digital darkness."

Clyburn pointed out that at one time both Republicans and Democrats supported bills to "block states from restricting local governments’ ability to provide Internet service," notably, the Community Broadband Act of 2005. She also noted that essentially the same bill has been reintroduced, this time by Democrats only. "The only thing that has changed is the lack of bipartisan support."

Commissioner Ajit Pai dissented from the decision, saying flatly that the FCC did not have the authority to pre-empt. He called the decision unlawful and odd.

"Judicial precedent makes clear that the FCC simply does not have the power to do this," Pai said. "In taking this step, the FCC usurps fundamental aspects of state sovereignty. And it disrupts the balance of power between the federal government and state governments that lies at the core of our constitutional system of government."

Pai said he was not taking any position on any municipal broadband project, but was simply saying -- though in a lengthy dissent -- that the FCC did not have the authority to do what it was doing, and dissented.

"The FCC does not have the legal authority to override the decisions made by Tennessee and North Carolina," he said. "Under the law, it is up to the people of those two states and their elected representatives — not the Commission — to decide whether and to what extent to allow municipalities to operate broadband projects. Today’s order is therefore unlawful."

Fellow Republican commssioner Michael O'Rielly, in his stinging and lengthy dissent, called the FCC's reading of Sec. 706 authority distorted and said the agency was using it arrogantly to rewrite state laws; that the decision was legally infirm and bad public policy; that the overly broad restrictions would pre-empt voting requirements and meeting requirements; that the order was hostile to states; that it seemed no restriction would seem to survive the FCC's "unvarnished skepticism"; and that an unintended consequence could be that states pre-empt municipal broadband altogether rather than limit it, since the FCC has recognized it can't pre-empt those laws, only ones that limit it once it is allowed.

Additionally, O'Rielly said the FCC appeared to be using Sec. 706 as carte blanche for regulation.

Wheeler, in his statement on the item, said it was a broadband truth that you can't say you are for broadband and then turn around and endorse limits on who can offer it and you can't reduce barriers to broadband investment and then erect them. That dog won't hunt, he said.

He said the states have authorized municipal broadband, then tried to limit it. The FCC's decision, he noted, was to cut through that red tape in these two specific instances.

But Wheeler also said he hoped it put a spotlight on an ongoing effort to put restrictions on what elected officials can do, and he called out out the "activities of incumbents to block consumer choice and competition through legislation" and the "thickets" of red tape meant to discourage competition.

The chairman also pointed to various audience members who he said had various issues with state limits on expanding gigabit muni broadband -- such as lack of access, kids having to drive elsewhere to get homework online and businesses moving. He said the decision is pro-broadband and pro-competition.

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.) said the FCC should leave the preempting to Congress.

“Preemption of state law is a limited power reserved to the U.S. Congress," they said. "Today’s 3-2 vote is as disappointing as it ispredictable with this commission where political victory is so often put ahead of the rule of law and the economy’s best interest. The FCC should respect the decisions of each state - whether to allow their municipalities to build out broadband networks or not. A one-size-fits-all approach from unelected Washington bureaucrats prevents states and municipalities from making the tough choices to allocate precious taxpayer dollars.”

Like the Title II vote that is to follow Thursday, the municipal broadband decision is expected to be challenged in court, and a bill has already been introduced to block the FCC preemption and any similar effort.

House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Communications chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.) gave a shout out to private industry in the wake of the President's speech touting municipal broadband and federal preemption of state laws limiting it.

“With precious dollars already stretched thin, state and local officials know better than beltway bureaucrats what’s best for their communities. We should applaud and encourage private investment to develop state-of-the-art broadband networks,” they said in a statement.

“The Internet is a great American success story that gets better by the day because of the billions of dollars that are invested every year to expand and improve broadband access and speeds, and because of limited federal government interference. That private investment is the engine that drives Internet innovation and brings high-speed Internet access to every corner of our country – a goal we all share.”

The President traveled to Cedar Falls, Iowa, to promote high-speed broadband and the Cedar Falls Utilities municipal system's 1 gig service. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has also signaled that he wants a February vote on a couple of petitions my municipalities to preempt state laws, a vote that will likely be in support of those petitions.

“Cedar Falls is a success story," the legislators said, "but not all communities have seen the same results. The history of municipal Internet access is littered with many costly failures that no one wants to repeat. We urge the commission to work with Congress through our CommActUpdate process to improve our laws, promote continued investment in Internet infrastructure, and spur competition."