Big telecoms have won bigly for decades, and more so under the current Republican administration. One of the bright spots of this past November’s elections was that well over a dozen Colorado municipalities voted yes on measures that would allow their local officials pursue city-funded telecommunications and broadband services. One of those places was Fort Collins, Colorado. Comcast fought very hard to make this vote go away and the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) has analyzed how hard they fought.
When we analyzed Comcast’s investment in the Fort Collins election for our report, Comcast Spends Big on Local Elections: Would Lose Million in Revenue from Real Broadband Competition, we looked at the logic behind the big ISP’s investment to stop measure 2B. At the time, the front for Comcast and CenturyLink, Priorities First Fort Collins, had only spent about $200,000. Within two weeks of releasing our report, that figure rose to more than $450,000. The last campaign report, filed in early December, reports that the organization spent approximately $450,000 more. All told, the total amount spent by Priorities First Fort Collins for the compaign came to a whopping $900,999.
The grassroots organization Fort Collins Citizens’ Broadband Committee spent a little more than $15,000.
There’s a reason why the big telecoms and Republicans are suddenly against state’s rights ability to vote on and build their own telecommunication’s protections for citizens. It’s not hard to get people to understand that telecommunication companies do not have any competition and zero incentive to make their services better and more affordable. They are too greedy to do that.