Biden silent on municipal broadband as he makes $65B deal with Republicans

President Joe Biden announced a $65 billion broadband-deployment deal Thursday with Senate Republicans and Democrats, but he provided no details on whether the plan will prioritize municipal broadband networks as the president originally proposed.Congressional Republicans have tried to ban municipal broadband nationwide, so it's highly unlikely that they would have agreed to Biden's stated goal of giving public networks priority over private ISPs in the next big round of government subsidies. AT&T John Stankey called Biden's plan to fund municipal networks "misguided" and said he was confident that Congress would steer legislation in the more "pragmatic" direction that AT&T favors.That would likely involve AT&T and other private ISPs continuing to receive billions of dollars from the government to build networks in rural areas without necessarily having to deploy future-proof infrastructure. We'll update this article if we get any answers.The plan Biden released in March said he also intends to eliminate "barriers that prevent municipally owned or affiliated providers and rural electric co-ops from competing on an even playing field with private providers." That could involve overturning laws in 17 states that greatly restrict the rights of cities and towns to build broadband networks. Angus King, the Maine independent who caucuses with Democrats, rounded out the list.Biden's fact sheet said that some of the infrastructure funding will come from "5G spectrum auction proceeds" and "state and local investment in broadband infrastructure." Biden's plan didn't specify what that last phrase refers to, but Politico reported that Sen. Warner's office said it "refers to $20 billion in money already allocated in the March pandemic relief plan."Even this deal is not guaranteed to be enacted.