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Wilson, NC already has municipal TV, Internet, and phone - Greenlight, which is the reason for this legislation. Based on what I've read, the cable and phone companies in NC have been trying to use legislation to fight Greenlight since its inception. Greenlight does not use tax payer money to pay for the services they provide. See http://www.wilsonnc.org/living/fiberopticnetwork/greenlightfaq/ They have some of the best rates I've seen. Their site is http://www.greenlightnc.com/

This is really about the small town of Wilson, NC and its community project Greenlight. http://www.greenlightnc.com/ It provides broadband, tv and phone to customers in Wilson for less than Time Warner. Immediately time warner and Embarq began lobbying to shut it down. Time Warner was forced to keep prices lower in nearby areas. It has been an ongoing story for years: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/TWC-Embarq-Wilson-Greenlight,7610.html

There's a blog with more information: http://savencbb.wordpress.com/

It may also be interesting for people to read about the project that caused so much angst among ISPs: http://www.greenlightnc.com/

The good people of Wilson, NC pay $99/month for 10/10 Mbps internet service, 81 TV channels and telephone service. How'd they manage that, you ask? Well, the city-owned and operated cable service called Greenlight came into being when the City of Wilson approached TWC and local DSL provider Embarq and requested faster service for the area. 'TWC refused the request. And so Greenlight was born,' says blogger Peter Smith. 'Now Time Warner Cable and Embarq are upset that they've got competition, and rather than try to go head to head with Greenlight on price and service, they've instead been lobbying the state government of NC to pass laws to put Greenlight out of business.

As I have read about this case local businesses and private citizens lobbied and organized and eventually got the project financed by the issuing of bonds. Quote from their FAQ "The funds for constructing the fiber network come from bonds issued by the City of Wilson. Tax revenues are not being used to fund this project in any way."

With large ISP's fighting local democracy I can understand why public pressure for better broadband infrastructure arises.

This is a very familiar story, that we have seen play out with Greenlight in Wilson NC.
FTTP, up to 100 symmetric bandwidth, and the telecoms threw a freaking fit, and did their best to annihilate municipal broadband, and failed to stop it.

Why don't you and your colleagues in the same situation band up and start up a non-profit phone company? This company will not have a shortage of subscribers as the number of people being ripped off by these phone companies is not in short supply.

It reminds me of the town of Wilson that Time Warner refused internet service and they (the town), did something about it.

There's a fine line between [citation needed] and wanting someone else to do your homework for you...

http://www.greenlightnc.com/about/faq/

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=14934

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_002683.html

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/04/twc-without-data-caps-internet-upgrades-now-in-doubt.ars

This isn't an exhaustive background on the subject, but it's enough to point you in the right direction. Most of these links are available by googling "greenlight isp". Most of these links, and more like them, have been posted either in this /. article's comments or in the article that ran a few days ago on basically the same subject.


((Googling "Hetch Hetchy" or "Raker Act scandal" also makes for some interesting reading along the same lines))

Seems the big ISPs don't really want your kind in the broadband business. Watch what happens when good ideas meet greed - i.e. Greenlight providing competition to the greedy last mile ISPs.

All I have to say is - good luck!

Interesting? How did that help the person or answer any questions at all? What an extremely shitty defeatist attitude.

Seems the big ISPs don't really want your kind in the broadband business. Watch what happens when good ideas meet greed - i.e. Greenlight providing competition to the greedy last mile ISPs.

All I have to say is - good luck!

The only reason this ISP is so cheap is that, like any other government project, it's being funded by your tax dollars. (Note that their website says it's being paid for through bonds---well, guess where the money to pay off bonds comes from? Taxes the city collects. Municipal bonds are nothing more than deferred taxation.) I could sell you Internet service for $0.01/mo if I could just steal money to make up the difference, too.

Time Warner is one of the scummier cable companies* (they're a government-granted monopolist, like all cable companies, so they get no support from me), but something like this is something that should be opposed---if "city-owned" ISPs start catching on, you can say goodbye to private ones. Who's going to be able to compete against a company who can undercut competition by lowering their prices and making up the difference with public funding? And just wait until the city starts passing ordinances or engaging in other shenanigans to limit competition with their ISP. That's almost always what happens when governments own businesses that compete with private businesses. Being the holders of a monopoly on legitimate force, they can't resist.

Oh, and since this is government-owned, has anyone looked into whether or not this company will be forcing filtering or anything else heinous on their customers?

* That honor probably goes to Comcast.

So this is what they are offering, at a profit right? (No govt. subsidies putting TWC out of business in the area, right?)

http://www.greenlightnc.com/home/internet/internetonly/

$59.95 for 20 mbps UP AND DOWN? 2UP? And they do this profitably right? Then is it possible everyone else is getting screwed over by their ISP Monopolies/Duopolies?

"The 20Mbps speed includes both uploads and downloads and is the fastest residential speed available anywhere in North Carolina."

Go Greenlight go! I wonder what the real estate is like in the area served.

Unless there is a specific limit of use in the Terms of Use/Service, then a user should be able to upload/download as much data as they want. I can understand not wanting non-business users to setup major servers or commercial systems but not a user who downloads movies, music, play games, etc, etc. That is complete foolishness to limit these users and even worse to randomly shut them down. I am still pretty close to canceling my Time Warner Cable services here in Greensboro, NC and I would like to try and push a bond referendum to the Greensboro city council to do what Wilson, NC did with their fiber-optic network (right to the house) and the Greenlight services they created: http://www.wilsonnc.org/living/fiberopticnetwork/ http://www.greenlightnc.com/

Will my taxes go up because this project is so expensive?
No. The funds for constructing the fiber network come from bonds issued by the City of Wilson. Tax revenues are not being used to fund this project in any way.