Industry News – 11-15-19

This may be a report card you lose on your way home from school. The Free State Foundation handed out grades on the issue of broadband deployment to some of the top Democratic contenders for President this week, and it wasn’t pretty. The FSF report graded on two specific items: 1) net neutrality and the regulatory treatment of information services and, 2) proposals to accelerate deployment. On net neutrality, none of the candidates garnered better than a C- (Klobuchar and Buttigieg), while Joe Biden received an incomplete.  On funding the expansion of broadband, Biden led the way with a B-, (although the report noted that his BB platform has been rather thin), and Elizabeth Warren received an F. Her failing grade was attributed to favoring public networks over private, allocating government funding for overbuilding, and imposing burdensome regulations that would discourage private investment.