"Net neutrality" still gets people mad. Millions have the vague sense that the high prices, frustration over sheer unavailability, awful customer service, and feeling of helplessness associated with internet access in America would be fixed if only net neutrality were the law of the land. As I've written here in the past, that's not exactly true: Without classifying high-speed internet access as a utility and taking meaningful policy steps to ensure publicly overseen, open, reasonably priced, last-mile fiber is in place everywhere, we'll be stuck with the service we’ve got. A rule guaranteeing net neutrality--which would cover only how network providers treat content going over their lines--won’t solve the larger, structural issues of noncompetitive, high-priced access.

Susan Crawford (@scrawford) is an Ideas contributor for WIRED, a professor at Harvard Law School, and author of Fiber: The Coming Tech Revolution—and Why America Might Miss It.

To keep moving toward better policy, though, we'll need to keep internet access on the radar screen leading up to the 2020 election. At the moment, “net neutrality” is our best vehicle for that, as narrow a solution as it is. So it’s good news that, last month, the House passed net neutrality protections and advocates trumpeted their delight. To be sure, the status quo continues to prevail, with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) asserting that the House bill would be "dead on arrival" in the Senate. And although some Democratic senators have suggested that net neutrality provisions could be attached to a House spending bill, it's more likely that the current House-Senate stalemate will endure—which is a good sign for 2020. Enough voters care about “net neutrality” that a clear line between the Democrats supporting it and the Republicans getting in the way is helpful to the overall Democratic cause.

While we're waiting, here's some history: The tussle over "net neutrality" started 20 years ago in Portland, Oregon, home of drizzling rain and ample coffee. Today, Portland and its region are poised to be Ground Zero for resolving the real issues behind public concern over “net neutrality”—the stagnant, uncompetitive, hopelessly outclassed state of internet access in America. Portland is taking seriously the idea of a publicly overseen dark-fiber network over which private providers could compete to offer cheap, ubiquitous internet access. Let's hope this next journey is shorter and smoother than the last one was.

In June 1998, there were 20 or 30 local internet service providers in Portland, according to Marshall Runkel, who today is chief of staff to Portland commissioner (as City Council members are known) Chloe Eudaly. Back then, Runkel was 28 years old and a staffer for commissioner Erik Sten, the youngest person ever elected to the Portland City Council (aged 27). That month, AT&T (the long-distance provider that had emerged from the breakup of Ma Bell) announced plans to buy TCI, which held the cable franchises in Portland. The independent ISPs, who had a legal right to run their internet access businesses over the copper phone lines of telephone companies, wanted the same opportunity for cable lines. They were worried that they wouldn't be able to sell their services over cable, and "they provided an important voice in the conversation," says Runkel.

Even before June 1998, Portland had made common cause with several neighboring local governments, deciding to negotiate with cable franchisees collectively, as a region. Smart thing to do. The regional alliance formed the Mount Hood Cable Regulatory Commission, which still exists, and appointed a citizen advisory committee to make recommendations about cable franchise policy.

In order for AT&T to take over TCI’s valuable franchise agreements, the Mount Hood Cable Regulatory Commission had to agree to the transaction. This gave local government a lever with which it could demand particular behavior from AT&T. And the citizens were really worried about AT&T's potential control over data content, as well as the prospect of diminished ISP competition. So the citizen advisory committee recommended that the region require AT&T to operate on an "open access" basis, allowing any ISP to compete across its wires. That didn't fit with AT&T's plans; it wanted to offer a single ISP controlled by the cable industry, called @Home.