Hoping to ensure it can actually spend its share of historic broadband funding, Montana lawmakers have tweaked the state’s restrictions on community broadband. However, experts say most of the state law’s pointless restrictions remain intact, undermining state efforts to bring affordable, next-generation broadband access to Montana residents.

Montana’s one of seventeen states that have passed laws banning or restricting municipal broadband networks. The bills are usually ghost written by telecom monopoly lawyers, and in many states either outright prohibit community-owned broadband networks, or are designed to make funding and expanding such networks untenable.

Regional telecom giants like Comcast, AT&T, and Charter—who receive untold billions in poorly tracked taxpayer subsidies—quickly got to work spreading talking points within the legislature claiming that community-owned broadband networks are inherently always a taxpayer boondoggle. It’s a favorite claim of industry and its assorted proxies; it’s also not true.