Welcome to the Tech Policy Podcast. I'm Evan Swarshab, your host. On today's show, government-run

internet. As cities and towns look to expand their city and town-owned broadband networks beyond their

borders and change the way they operate, they're running up against state laws.

Now, these laws explicitly authorize cities and towns to build their own networks, but they also

govern how and where they may operate. That's an important distinction. Now, two government-owned

networks in Chattanooga, Tennessee and Wilson, North Carolina, petitions the FCC to overturn state

laws that, again, allow the networks to operate, but restrict the way that they can expand beyond

their borders and also have some other regulations about level playing field and so on. Now,

we'll get into those details. Joining me to discuss this is government-owned and operated talking head.

Baron, thank you for joining me.

I had a funny response to that the first time we recorded this podcast, but now that we've been

going back and forth at this for almost an hour, I'm just out of humor.

Nothing like a think tank called Tech Freedom that has technical difficulties, right?

Well, and our normally prescripted humor is just, it's even less funny when we're doing it for the third time.

Oh, well, maybe just despite the sound difficulties we had in our first take, we can splice in those hilarious jokes that are completely indispensable to the listener.

Would that be a good idea?

No.

All right, so just to set up the timeline here, in fall of 2014, Wilson, North Carolina and Chattanooga, Tennessee, they petitioned the

FCC to preempt the laws in those two states that govern municipal broadband. In February of 2015,

the FCC obliged, voting three to two, to overturn the laws. Now February of 2015, the FCC obliged voting three to two to overturn the laws.

Now, of course, they didn't release the order they voted on until March because you have to

vote on something before you can show everyone what's in it, right?

...