Welcome to MKU

Internet affordability and reliability are tied to a number of factors, influenced by both public policy, state and federal regulations, and intra-operator competition.

Our organization was formed to begin addressing some of the most pressing issues limiting equitable access to internet services and infrastructure. Increasing regulatory costs, for example, are most often subsidized to consumers directly, putting the expenses of compliance on the internet user rather than making it core to operations costs absorbed by the internet service provider.

Additionally, various digital services are bundled together with initial plans or up-sold to consumers without providing them with clear knowledge of how this may affect the pricing of the delivered product. Sometimes, this included charges and regulatory fees for digital products that are never utilized, burdening the customer with unavoidable charges that are difficult to have removed. Some of these services are not even accessible to paying customers, creating dangerous situations such as in the case of emergency service outages.

Already, businesses are recognizing that there is a need to make internet services more accessible to consumers. As the development of communications technology has accelerated, alternatives to wireline service (which can be expensive to provide to some target geographies) has continued to grow more attractive to greater numbers of customer segments. High speed mobile connections, satellite, and long distance radio are a few low-cost, high-throughput alternatives that are beginning to bring fairer costs to consumers.

There's still much that can be done to further make these types of alternatives attractive to providers, such as extending the same municipal protections that are offered to wireline carriers, but the greatest investment one can make is to continue to support the rollout of these new technologies. We hope you will join us on this journey!