Why Has San Francisco Allowed Comcast and AT&T to Dictate Its Broadband Future (Or Lack Thereof)? American cities across the country face the same problem: major private Internet providers, facing little in the way of competition, refusing to invest and upgrade their networks to all residents. But not every city has gone through the trouble to analyze the problem, come up with a solution, and still done nothing like San Francisco. For over a year, the city has sat on a fully vetted and ready to implement strategy to bring affordable high-speed broadband competition to all of its residents. According to the city’s own analysis, private providers will never address some of the most serious problems with the community’s infrastructure—such as the fact that 100,000 residents lack access to broadband, and 50,000 residents only have access to dial up speeds. Of the city’s public school students, 15 percent do not have access to the Internet, with that number rising to 30 percent f...
