Each year, private internet service providers (ISPs) like Comcast and Verizon receive billions in public funds and financial incentives to encourage broadband investment in poor and rural areas. Much of this money, however, ends up back in the pocket of shareholders — and large swaths of the American public continue to grapple with poor internet access. Tarnoff says we shouldn’t be surprised: private broadband companies are responsible for causing connectivity inequality in the first place, and incentives don’t outweigh the cost of extending affordable broadband access. It’s time to use public funds to imagine alternative futures without private ISPs.

While private ISPs leave behind poor and rural areas in search of greater financial gains, hundreds of community-owned ISPs across the country have a different priority: not to maximize profits but to maximize the speed and quality of their network for local users. Publicly owned and community-owned ISPs receiving funds may be necessary to employ collective governance and encourage popular participation, giving members of the community say over their services — including its cost. But community-owned networks aren’t just good in theory: the Electric Power Board (EPB) of Chattanooga, a municipal broadband company based in Tennessee, offers some of the fastest internet in the country at some of its lowest rates. And the rates would be even lower if state law didn’t prevent utility companies from selling services below cost and thereby challenging private companies. Says Tarnoff, “To put people over profit,” as the EPB has done, “you need to create spaces where the people can rule.”