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LC1539 – An Act Allowing Montana Municipalities to Own and Operate Municipal Broadband Systems

February 17, 2021 /

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The MDT Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) Program encourages and supports the participation of companies owned and controlled by socially and economically disadvantaged individuals in transportation contracts.

“AN ACT ALLOWING MUNICIPALITIES TO OWN AND OPERATE 4MUNICIPAL BROADBAND SYSTEMS; AMENDING SECTION 30-14-1702, MCA; REPEALING SECTIONS 2-517-601, 2-17-602, 2-17-603, AND 2-17-604, MCA; AND PROVIDING AN IMMEDIATE EFFECTIVE DATE.

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Montana Government Competition With Private Internet Services Providers Prohibited

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Municipal Broadband Is Roadblocked Or Outlawed In 22 States Including Montana. States without municipal broadband restrictions have lower internet prices on average.

States without restrictions enjoyed higher access to low-priced broadband plans on average. Low-priced access data was taken from active internet plans in our database as of Q2 2020.

Iowa Governor’s $450M Broadband Buildout Receives Support – “We need to see it as important as highways, water, sewer, power.”

Just 18.5 percent of Iowans have access to affordable Internet and the average download speed is the second worst in the nation. But Gov. Reynolds hopes to get Iowans connected over the next three years.

“The 100 meg by 100 meg is critical for any business, any homeowner, students and more so now that we’re doing Zoom calls and those types of things,” Fencl said, explaining high download speeds but low upload speeds often cause outages because upload speed won’t work if the download speed is saturated. “That synchronous upload speed has to be there.”

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