For fifteen years now I‘ve watched as phone and cable duopolies lobby to pass draft legislation designed to keep broadband uncompetitive. Specifically, in more than a dozen states these protectionist measures either hinder or outright ban a town or city‘s ability to wire itself for broadband (either alone or with a private industry partner) — even in cases where nobody else will. If the laws don‘t ban such efforts outright, they force anyone looking to build a broadband network to jump through layers upon layers of bureaucratic hoops, during which the regional duopolies with limitless budgets harass the efforts with lawsuits and negative publicity campaigns (I‘ve seen ISPs hire push pollsters to tell locals that a government-built network would ban their religious programming).