Modern life rests on a peculiar tension: near-total dependence on Wi-Fi paired with a habit of treating it like a lifestyle amenity. Internet access is lumped in with gym memberships and streaming subscriptions, as though it is optional. It is not. Wi-Fi is no longer a luxury.
So, what does that mislabeling do? It asks people to navigate public life with a tool that both the market and the state still regard as nonessential. Gaven Brady, a fourth year General Social Science, said “without Wi-Fi, I’d have to go back to a 1980’s philosophy where I just wait to get something in the mail, then go to deal with it in person.”
While this may work for filing your taxes, try going offline for a week and apply for a job. Turn in homework. Make a medical appointment. Check your bank account. Contest a parking ticket. Most of life’s responsibilities do not afford us the luxury of going back to the 80s.
In practice, the internet of today resembles plumbing more than a perk: easy to forget when it flows, impossible to ignore when it fails. So, it ought to be a public good.
But first, the term needs sharpening, because importance alone does not place something in that category. Kathleen Mullen, an associate professor in the University of Oregon’s economics department said “public goods are those that are nonrival and nonexclusive.”
In other words, one person’s use does not meaningfully diminish another’s — nonrival — and access cannot easily be limited to a select few — nonexclusive. Think of a lighthouse: one ship’s use of its beam does not dim it for another, and no nearby vessel can realistically be shut out from its light.
Broadband does not fully satisfy either condition. Mullen explained, “the internet… (is) nonrival up to a point… (and) not nonexclusive — you can definitely limit access.”
Fair enough; broadband is no lighthouse. Comcast can shut off your service, a school can password-protect a network and when too many people pile on, the digital freeway clogs.
Because of this, “broadband access is a private good whose consumption is fully internalized by the people who pay for it,” Mullen said. If the person paying for internet service is also the one receiving its benefits, the logic goes, then taxpayers should not be asked to subsidize it.
It is an elegant argument on paper: if broadband is private, let private enterprise have its way. But that logic frays because for many Americans, there is no bustling field of competitors vying for their business. On the contrary, in 2017, 51% of Americans had access to just one internet provider according to the GAO. Worse still, 10% had none at all, with the Brookings Institute finding the number jumps to 39% in rural communities.
This isn’t a surprise. Building fiber networks requires immense upfront capital, which keeps new competitors out and leaves entrenched providers under too little pressure to compete.
This is market failure in plain view: an industry structured to dull competition and leave entire communities with too little service, too much cost or no access at all. Under these conditions, public intervention is not a distortion of an efficient market providing a private good so much as a response to one that is failing to do so.
And there is evidence that treating it as a public good can work. Chattanooga, Tennessee, built a public fiber-optic network for $162 million. Since launch, the network has provided residents with better service at lower prices and generated $5.3 billion in community benefits from 2011 to 2025, marking a 6-fold return on investment according to a study out of the University of Tennessee.
A government reveals its priorities by what it builds. Roads say mobility matters. Libraries say knowledge matters. Parks say outdoor recreation matters. In 2026, Wi-Fi belongs on that list. Maybe not because it is a perfect public good in theory, but because it has become a practical public necessity in fact.
