An ordinance just passed by the Oakland City Council will keep renters from being held hostage to their landlord’s choice of internet service provider, according to Electronic Frontier Foundation. The Communications Service Provider Choice Ordinance prohibits owners of apartment complexes from “interfering with an occupant’s ability to receive service from the communications provider of their choice,” the foundation said.
“Across the country—through elaborate kickback schemes—large, corporate ISPs looking to lock out competition have manipulated landlords into denying their tenants the right to choose the internet provider that best meets their family’s needs and values,” EFF said.
The Oakland ordinance, which was three years in the making, was modeled on a San Francisco law adopted in 2016, requires reasonable access to any qualified communication provider that has received a service request from a building occupant.
“San Francisco’s law has already proven effective. There, one competitive local ISP, which had previously been locked out of properties of forty or more units with active revenue sharing agreements, gained access to more than 1,800 new units by 2020,” EFF said. “Even for those who choose to stay with their existing provider, a competitive communications market benefits all residents by incentivizing providers to offer the best services at the lowest prices.”
The Bay Area is a very competitive ISP market, but it is an outlier among U.S. cities, according to EFF. “We hope to see cities and towns across the country step up to protect competition and foster new competitive options by investing in citywide fiber-optic networks and opening that infrastructure to private ISPs,” the Foundation said.
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