Anti-Muni Broadband Bills Country Wide

Ant writes "Broadband Reports says that 14 and possibly more states that have or will pass(ed) bills banning community-run broadband. Free Pass shows a map breakdown of the states while Tallahassee.com takes a look at a newly proposed bill in Florida, backed by Sprint, BellSouth, Verizon, and Comcast, designed to bog down the muni-development process."

Comments

rather strong legislation for Texas

[freakasor]

The bill in the works for Texas would kill not only municipal internet service but could be used to shut down municipal web sites, information channels, etc. "Information" services is a large amount of stuff to block with a single piece of legislation.
http://www.freepress.net/communityinternet/=TXbill
Under the bill, municipalities and municipal electric utilities would be prohibited from providing, directly or indirectly, alone or in partnership with other service providers, either "telecommunications" or "information" services as those terms are defined under federal law.

My experience with municipal broadband

[Mr_Perl]

In my small town of Spencer, IA we have a municipal provider of electricity, cable TV, phone, and broadband.

Phone costs $10.50/mo per line.
Basic Cable costs $5.00/mo
3Mbit/sec broadband costs $27.50/mo.

Not to mention some of the lowest electric rates in the state.

The reason we did this was because the local cable company had spent decades gouging on the prices on cable and having crappy service and we finally had enough of it and built our own system.

Mediacom still is around, but now charging fair prices. This municipal effort INCREASED COMPETITION, breaking the monopoly the phone and cable companies enjoyed for so many years.

I'm a firm believer in Municipal Utilities, if you have the chance to write a letter to your congresspeople by all means do it now.