Over the past several years, Connecticut and states across the nation have faced budget crises. Elected officials have made massive cuts to vital services like education, police, and first responders. Our roads, bridges and other critical infrastructure continue to age, while upgrades and repairs are put on hold because local governments simply can’t afford these projects.

Now, a group of legislators, municipal leaders and other elected officials in Connecticut are advocating for a statewide municipal broadband network. They want the state to compete with the likes of Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast to provide Internet services to residents and local businesses.

These elected officials claim government-owned networks can bring competition to Internet service, increasing speeds and lowering prices. President Obama has endorsed this concept, going as far as including a line about municipal broadband in his recent State of the Union address, saying he intended to “help folks build the fastest networks.”

Recently, the FCC voted to prevent state governments from stopping local governments efforts to build such networks. Because Connecticut’s laws actually favor such networks, their action didn’t change anything for the Nutmeg State. But the premise — that our current broadband is slow, costly and inaccessible to many — simply does not check out.

Connecticut has the third fastest average broadband speeds in the country, and fifth fastest broadband speed in the world. The White House recognized Connecticut for being among the nation’s leaders in broadband deployment. The average speed over the last year has increased 38 percent for broadband connections in Connecticut.

All of this is thanks to our current system of private businesses competing with each other for customers. Since 1996, U.S. broadband providers invested nearly $1.3 trillion in broadband networks. In Connecticut, the cable industry has invested nearly $2 billion over the past six years to deploy faster connections.

While our broadband infrastructure has flourished, our public infrastructure is crumbling. Recent reports single Connecticut’s infrastructure out as among the worst in the nation. According to a 2014 White House report, 41 percent of Connecticut’s 21,000 miles of roads are in “poor condition” and 35 percent of the state’s 4,200 bridges are “structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.” The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that the state’s schools require $2.6 billion for infrastructure; and the state’s drinking water and wastewater facilities will each require $3.6 billion over the next two decades.

Anyone who has sat in rush-hour traffic on Interstates 95, 91, or 84, or has blown a tire thanks to a pothole, or has had to sit at the airport for hours after his or her flight was canceled, knows all too well the cost of inaction. Fortunately, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has made rebuilding Connecticut infrastructure a major priority. But he needs the other elected leaders to join in recognizing and solving the true crisis facing the state.

Unfortunately, studies show that the government-run broadband is about as efficient as the local motor vehicle office. It has been tried and, for the most part, taxpayers ended up losing. Charles M. Davidson and Michael J. Santorelli, from New York Law School, recently studied 10 such networks, concluding that most are awash in debt and either dragging down their communities or being sold off at multimillion-dollar losses.

In Connecticut, Groton spent $38 million building a local network. After losing an average of $2 million a year, local leaders concluded that the service was financially unsustainable and sold it to private investors for $550,000. Taxpayers won’t finish paying off the $27.5 million borrowed for this project until 2027.

Burlington, Vermont borrowed over $33 million, plus an additional $16.9 million in taxpayer funds, to construct and operate a local network. The city defaulted on the loan, eventually paying $10.5 million to resolve the resulting litigation. And they also agreed to sell the network within 3-5 years but there is no guarantee the sale proceeds will be sufficient to recoup even a portion of the taxpayer investment.

America is one of only a handful of countries with three different high-speed Internet technologies — cable, DSL and wireless — fully deployed and vying for customers.

Everyone agrees that investment in next-generation Internet service is vital for Connecticut and the U.S. to remain competitive, as business, education and media consumption increasingly take place online. But with private companies already leading the way, the push for local governments to allocate precious public dollars to build duplicative networks is a poor solution to an imaginary problem.

Lindsay Lewis is executive director of the Progressive Policy Institute.