By Monday, Governor Gavin Newsom’s pen will rewrite California’s broadband future for the next 14 years. To receive California’s share of the $42 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program investment, designed to connect consumers with high-speed internet, Governor Newsom must suspend enforcement of state net neutrality laws for 4 years while the networks are built, and for a following 10-year “Federal interest period.” He should take the deal.
California rightly wants the best internet service possible for its consumers. But net neutrality rules regulate internet service providers (ISPs), like Comcast and AT&T, as a public utility—gas, water, and electric service—forbidding them from selling different internet speeds for different types of online content. This line of reasoning assumes mandatory sameness across what consumers can access, leveling the playing field for low-income households.
The goal is to protect consumers by ensuring equal access to reliable, high-speed connectivity. Too bad it has the opposite effect.
Difficult-to-navigate administrative barriers are effective hurdles to building more fiber. Research shows that net neutrality laws constitute one such deterrent—they directly reduce fiber-optic investments.
That means consumers must endure years-long delays before they can enjoy better service—not because better service doesn’t exist, but because builders struggle to bring it to them. It doesn’t matter what kind of speeds a consumer might have if the infrastructure never gets built in the first place.
This leans heavily into another hot debate in California: landlines’ role in public safety. State “carrier of last resort” laws require that companies trying to retire the copper wiring that landlines depend on must install as good or better replacements first. But with net neutrality contributing to delayed investment, it becomes much harder to meet legal requirements before upgrading landlines.
That keeps copper-dependent consumers needlessly at risk. If one landline loses connectivity, all downstream landlines lose connectivity, too. That’s why phone service providers have been working hard to replace landlines for years. They have built-in redundancies that can reroute data traffic around damaged lines, ensuring consumers on the other side aren’t left without emergency communications. Fiber is regarded as the gold standard of connectivity in part because of its reliability; roadblocks to its rollout mean jeopardizing consumers.
Under California’s net neutrality regime, extending fiber networks to landline-dependent consumers is difficult to do. Under California’s approved BEAD plan, and free from net neutrality obstacles, network builders will connect about 143,000 new homes with fiber-optic cables. If reliable, high-speed internet for all is the true goal, giving up net neutrality for more fiber makes sense.
The choice is clear: better broadband everywhere is best for consumers. The California Public Utilities Commission itself already voted unanimously to adopt the final BEAD plan—conditions and all—should approval come from the Governor’s mansion.
The final decision now rests with Governor Newsom. He should trade deterrents against reliable service for investments in it. Californians will be better for it.
Nate Karren is a policy analyst with the American Consumer Institute, a nonprofit education and research organization. Follow Nate on X @NateKarrenOnX