Municipal Wi-Fi Battle Moves to Texas

Cryofan writes "The fight in Texas is heating up over municipal wireless. Texas House Bill 789, under consideration in Texas, would impose one of the most extreme bans on municipal involvement in any form of communications--free or otherwise (the bill could ban free library access)."

Comments

Re:State-run telco services have failed everywhere

[91degrees]

In Hull, England, the telephone service was run by the local Authority. They had free local calls since 1904, broadband ADSL before anyone else had heard of it, and they've had ADSL based TV for several years now.

States are large and tend to get overly beurocratic, but smaller governmental organisations often run things rather well.

Re:relevant section: 54.202

[mattspammail]

Tough one to give a straight answer on. Most of the school districts in Texas are independently operated. There are dozens in the Houston area alone. There also exist other types of school districts. One in the area is a municipal school district (Stafford, near Houston). The overseers, or school board, members in an independent school district are voted in. They are not run by a municipality. However in the case of Stafford MSD, the policy makers of the school district are, in fact, the local government. It's not the norm, but it will definitely need to be addressed before a law like this is passed. They'll need a small print area.