The claim last month from Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin that "we are well on our way to accomplishing the president's goal of universal, affordable access to broadband by 2007," may come as something of a surprise to the 90 percent of rural Americans who have no broadband at home. Perhaps it's just a question of definition. Universal, after all, is such an ambiguous term.

At any rate, the rate of rural broadband access is not likely to increase anytime soon if the phone and cable giants—and their friends in high governmental places—have their way. Indeed, the phone/cable duopoly, which already owns more than 90 percent of the broadband market, is doing all it can to ensure that it and it alone will be the provider of high-speed Internet service in this country, even in the parts of the country that it refuses to serve—the rural parts and low-income parts that don't offer quick and easy profit maximization.

To lock up the market (and effectively lock out rural people and poor people), the two-headed beast recently won approvals from the Supreme Court and FCC to rid itself of the pesky requirement to lease line access to competitors. Those decisions came despite the fact that much of the phone system was built with government and taxpayer help, despite the fact that the United States ranks somewhere between a lowly 12th and a dismal 16th in the percentage of people with access to broadband, and despite the fact that what the FCC calls high speed is slow by international comparison.

With one set of competitors vanquished, the deep-pocketed duopoly is now lobbying Congress and state legislatures to kill another by prohibiting local governments from setting up their own broadband systems. In some states, it's already won, outgunning and outspending its municipal adversaries to get those victories.

Though spun umpteen ways, the rationale for all this is pure, simple and plain as the nose on your face: greed. The phone and cable companies don't want anyone competing against them…even in markets they have shown no intention of serving. It's like my three-year-old screaming bloody murder when his brother picks up the toy sitting untouched for days. "I was going to play with that!"

Now if the product in question were a purely private good, one with benefits that accrue solely to the user like, say, golf clubs, I could buy an argument against government provision. But broadband Internet isn't like golf clubs. Its benefits go far beyond the individual user to improve an entire community's economy, schools, health care and public safety. In economist lingo, broadband Internet—like telephone service, electricity, water, sewer and so on—is or is at least very much akin to a public good. And as with all those services, if the private sector cannot or will not provide it and provide it to all at affordable rates, the public sector must.

Tired of waiting on the private sector, hundreds of municipalities across the country are doing just that. From Glasgow, Kentucky, to Flatonia, Texas, to Hermiston, Oregon, small, rural communities are improving their lots by building their own broadband systems. Neither Congress nor state legislatures should strip away that right.

According to University of Texas professor and chair of the Rural Policy Research Institute's Telecommunications Panel Sharon Strover, there is much more at stake here than meets the eye. "Communication is at the core of democracy, she told me. "It's far too important to be simply handed over to business. We need a communications system that is open to all. [Municipal systems] are locally grown initiatives responding to local needs, responding to citizens' desires. That should be respected. What kind of government do we have if we can't respect that?"

In his just-released report "Broadband Reality Check" sponsored by the Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union, Media Access Project and Freepress, S. Derek Turner concurs: "At the end of the day, local governments, accountable to local citizens, understand their own needs and should have the freedom to find local solutions to local problems. We should not require citizens to beg big corporations to deploy systems when these citizens have the power to take matters into their own hands."