Obama calls for an end to 19 state laws that restrict the rights of cities and towns to build their own broadband networks
Obama calls for end to 19 state laws that harm community broadband — President Obama today called for an end to state laws that restrict the rights of cities and towns to build their own broadband networks.
Context & Ripple Effects
Obama's call targets the patchwork of state preemption laws that big ISPs have used to wall off their territories from municipal competition. The timing matters: within weeks of this speech, the FCC moved to overrule those state laws directly, giving cities like Chattanooga a regulatory path around the very statutes Obama wants Congress to end.
The fight did not stay resolved. By 2019, a report counted 26 states restricting or prohibiting municipal broadband, more than when Obama made his appeal, and House Republicans later introduced the CONNECT Act with explicit limits on government-run networks — evidence that the state-law strategy outlasted the executive push.
First-order effects
- Cities and towns in the 19 named states gain a federal argument for building publicly owned networks where incumbents declined to serve, shifting the burden onto legislatures defending the restrictions.
Second-order effects
- Large ISPs lean harder on friendly state legislatures rather than competing directly — a playbook visible years later when telecom lobbying helped steer much of Biden's $41.6B broadband funding toward large companies instead of new municipal networks.
Third-order effects
- Broadband access becomes a recurring fault line between federal administrations and state governments, with each White House layering its own approach — Obama's ConnectHome pilot for low-income households, then Republican-led statutory limits — atop an unresolved question of who may build infrastructure.
The trend: Municipal broadband is caught in a durable federal-versus-state power struggle, with incumbents using state law as their primary competitive defense across successive administrations.