Connecticut this week was the latest state to shoot down industry-backed barriers preventing your town or city from building its own broadband networks, even if nobody else will.

Across the U.S., countless towns and cities either have no broadband at all, or are stuck with just one over-priced internet service provider (ISP). A lack of serious competition means ISPs often have no incentive to expand or improve their networks, and revolving door regulators ensure government usually won’t pressure them to try harder.

In response, more than 750 U.S. communities have started building their own locally-owned broadband networks, despite the industry’s near-constant effort to undermine them.

Nineteen States have passed industry backed laws prohibiting your town or city’s right to build its own broadband networks, even in cases when nobody else will. ISPs are also successful in getting state and local governments to bury restrictions in unrelated measures, as AT&T did when it tried to hamper community broadband in Missouri via an unrelated traffic ordinance.

One favored tactic by incumbent ISPs is to block competitors from accessing essential utility poles, something that hampered Google Fiber as it tried to disrupt the status quo. In Connecticut, local incumbents have spent years trying to stop community broadband builders from accessing either utility poles or fiber conduit, professing it to be a safety hazard.

Last year, Connecticut’s Public Utility Regulatory Agency (PURA) sided with large incumbent ISPs, declaring that communities could not use utility pole space for municipal fiber deployment, delaying community fiber ambitions. Municipalities and the state Office of Consumer Counsel (OCC) were quick to file suit, stating the PURA had no authority to make such a call.

Previous rulings backed by the telecom sector had stated towns and cities could only use this “gain space” for government or school networks, bot the broader public. But a ruling this week by Connecticut Superior Court Judge Richard Shortall overturned those restrictions, settling years of debate over a “municipal gain” law whose origins stems from the telegraph era.