Comcast-Led Campaign Ad Tried to Ruin Municipal Internet for Fort Collins

Big internet service providers almost never get high marks in customer service. If they’re sad about that, they can dry their tears with the millions in profits they rake in from a mostly cornered market. If you don’t want to purchase the internet from the service provider within your neighborhood, you’re basically out of luck. That’s why Fort Collins, Colorado’s plan to make the internet a public utility was so scary to the existing providers.

Measure 2B would make it legal for a city to consider making the internet a municipal utility. It wouldn’t require anyone to do anything, but it opened the door for the conversation. That was enough for the Comcast-led “Colorado Telecommunications Association” to fund “Priorities First Fort Collins,” which was the company that created the lovely little piece of television from the above video.

Every single line in the campaign ad is either incredibly misleading or a straight up lie. That’s fairly apparent to anyone watching the video, so no sweat, right? Well, apparently hearing “vote no on 2B” got through to enough people that voting day found almost 43 percent of Fort Collins voting against their best interests. The measure passed, and the Colorado town can now officially talk about a municipal internet, but this is not the last we’ll see from misleading Comcast ads. They’ll keep coming, and they’ll probably be a little better in the future. Stay vigilant.