There’s a pair of announcements regarding the state of municipal broadband in the US that highlight just how deep the divide is between the lapdogs of state and local legislatures and the handful of initiatives intended to actually improve access and performance.

First, there’s a new proposed law up in front of the Missouri State Legislature that would explicitly ban any attempt to build municipal broadband networks at the explicit behest of the cable industry. It’s a law that’s been introduced just months after cable company CenturyLink protested Columbia Missouri’s plan to study implementing its own, local network.

The new bill would forbid Missouri municipalities from creating their own local networks if any competitive service was available. Services would also be banned from existence if they cost more than $100,000. A town that chooses to offer a service where no competitive service is available is banned from doing so — unless it approves a tax explicitly for the purpose of establishing a competitive service. Towns are also explicitly forbidden from offering any kind of subsidy for any reason whatsoever, must conduct five-year impact studies, receive majority voter approval, and (in the event that a proposal fails to pass) are not allowed to put the question before voters again for at least two years. To put a cherry on top, the law also spells out precisely how the question must be phrased on the ballot.

Meanwhile, President Obama has openly called on more communities to explore municipal broadband, noting that it could be a cost-effective means of establishing rural service in areas where the major telcos and cable providers haven’t bothered to build out capacity. 94% of the US population in urban centers can purchase service of at least 25Mbps, whereas just 51% of rural Americans can do the same. Add in the fact that nearly 75% of Americans have no choice in high-end broadband provider, and the argument for local buildouts is even stronger.

By setting a 25Mbps target, Obama is being aggressive with his position on what “broadband” means, but it could also be argued that the White House is engaging in prudent future-proofing of a proposed standard. Certainly it makes more sense to set aggressive future targets as opposed to anemic ones that leave states and municipalities in a perpetual game of catch-up.

It’s not just a question of availability, but affordability. The report points out that household income correlates strongly with Internet availability and that while wireless services are available in many networks where wired service is under-provided, the high cost of service plans from AT&T and Verizon preclude these plans from being accessible to Americans of lower middle-class status and below. The report also documents how US citizens pay more for what service they do receive at virtually every price point:

Improving municipal broadband networks is one of the only ways to potentially break the carrier logjam that chokes off competition in the current market, but that can only happen if laws banning such competition are modified or repealed. Currently 19 states ban municipal broadband networks or impose such sharp restrictions on their use as to make them impossible to implement.

The great government intrusion fallacy

The telcos and cable companies regularly assault the prospect of municipal broadband as imposing an enormous, unwarranted intrusion of the government into the private sector, painting themselves as fearless champions of the free market under siege by regulation. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. Companies like Verizon and Comcast have received billions in tax breaks, service fund contributions, and federal grants to build out and expand existing networks.

Bills like the one proposed in Missouri don’t protect small business from all-powerful government, they protect huge multinational, vertically integrated conglomerates from local competition by preventing said localities from financing a service that might meet the particular needs of their community in a cost-effective manner. Many of the states in which these laws are in effect are stereotypical ‘red’ states whose citizens have no interest in allying with Big Government but might like to receive broadband at something less than triple digits a month.

Municipal broadband has been proven to work for both small towns and cities like Chattanooga, TN, where residents enjoy fiber’s cutting-edge performance at rates that are highly competitive with the best cities in the world. The continuing campaign to kill it isn’t driven out of conservative concern for local competition — it’s a gift card to titans like Comcast, who tend to reward their captive politicians with large campaign contributions.

Now read: Broadband ‘tax’ may be in the works to expand high-speed Internet access