NCLM Southern City Volume 71, Issue 2, 2021

NCLM.ORG 23 local governments in officially raising concerns about Suddenlink. Throughout North Carolina, stories abound of students flock- ing to fast food parking lots to use Wi-Fi, farmers struggling to acquire reliable internet connections to conduct their business and, especially during the pandemic, employees being unable to adequately work from home. The Institute for Local Self-Reliance highlighted this issue in its 2018 report Profiles of Monopoly: Big Cable and Telecom. “The market has spoken: The market is broken,” reads the opening line. The report, updated with data through 2020, concludes that in total, at least 83.3 million Americans can access broadband through only a single provider. “Millions of Americans still do not have a real choice when it comes to their Internet service. In urban areas, a relative majority can choose between two or more providers—usually the monopoly cable company and the often slower monopoly phone company. In rural areas the situation is worse.” Why can’t an outside company come in and provide better ser- vice? Some are trying, including RiverStreet Networks, a subsid- iary of the telephone cooperative Wilkes Communication. Their story provides a good example of the market’s impenetrability. Greg Coltrain is the company’s vice president of business devel- opment, and notes that as part of a telephone co-operative, they have different incentives than the large telecoms. “Our mission is to serve the unserved,” Coltrain says, though he notes that RiverStreet is a for-profit arm of the organization. “In our coop- erative areas, our customers are called members and are treated as owners. We've built our business around treating our for profit areas with the same pricing, service and support.” They focus on the unserved, primarily addressing the most rural parts of the state to build networks in counties that have no infrastructure already in place. The Broadband Market Failure continued from page 21 continues on page 24 In a well-functioning market, the citizens would have the power of choice. One service is poor, so they’ll go to another. One service is cheaper, one has better customer service, one is more reliable—that option gets selected. This is how competition yields positive results for consumers. In the internet market in many areas of North Carolina, this check does not exist.