Comment by tptacek

These are all statutes that impose obstacles to public bodies that want to roll out ISPs (few of the statutes are bans; more typical are rules like ad valorem taxation of ISP infrastructure). They're intended to offset cost advantages municipalities have in rolling out ISP infrastructure, because private ISPs have to pay taxes, buy rights of way, and actually win customers rather than rolling some of their costs off on the general levy. A colorable (though remote) concern would be that the most lucrative municipalities in a state might provision their own ISP service, thus cutting disincentivizing broadband providers from deploying anywhere in the state.

These rules don't keep people like the subject of this post from deploying community ISPs.

(I think the rules are very dumb but also the economics of small-scale municipal ISPs are not good at all; part of the reason they're dumb is that in reality a typical suburb has absolutely no hope of competing on price with Xfinity, Verizon, and AT&T.)