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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."
Here in the Land of The Free (i.e. Western Europe), we allow our local/community governments to do what the electorate want them to do.
Aren't we naive....
If there was as much money in building and running "Community Clubs" I'd wager the big corps would try taking over the basketball courts and hockey rinks. All so the locals have more choice, you know.
Trolling is a art,
Cable companies fought for and won laws that banned community run Cable TV type systems back in the early days of cable.
there used to be "community tv" or basically a neighborhood TV antenna setup. the would all get together and buy one large tower and good antennas as well as equipment to send the signal to the homes. these were made illegal in most places by cable tv companies in the area or coming into that area.
I know, my father used to set these up for smaller communities.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
A good compromise would be to ban municipal wireless internet access unless no provider has established a commercial wireless internet access within 2 years.
Why can't the communities register broadband companies and run them in a style similar to mutual societies or worker's co-operatives?
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Yeah, this is bullshit. Why not pass a bill that forbids commercial broadband providers from cornering the market and disallowing startup competition.
Oh wait, that would fall under anti-trust territory and we all know that "utilities" are basically exempt from that.
From TFA: "A bill limiting Internet offerings by government entities is back for legislative consideration..."
No rest for the weary. Even if its voted down, it will just come back at the next opportunity. That is why we don't get tired or frustrated, we stand strong and casually vote this crap down as many times as we have to.
Obviously community internet will lead to community controlled media eventually squeezeing out cable/phone and every other communication medium. I don't blame the companies one bit. But I will blame the government if they let this happen.
Community-backed broadband isn't the way we want to go. That sort of stuff is basically anti-capitalist at heart. Really. These companies might look like they're in it for the money, but really, they have our best interests at heart. Seriously. I promise.
Oh, and Saddam really did have all those weapons. Honest. I swear.
but on the other hand, I don't like rules that forbid a municipality from doing something which could benefit its citizens.
While in the vast majority of instances, it might be appropriate to ban a city from setting up its own ISP, there might be a few towns which are being ignored.
We have towns like that in my northern state. My father lives in a town with no broadband, heck, with NO local dial-up! To say that city can't set up its own ISP is ludicrous. The private sector has had decades to set up something but they've failed to even take notice. The city should be able to take action "for the common good" to set up its own.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Ah, yes. The free-market system, unfettered from legislative "regulations". Behold its efficiency! Marvel at its ability to out-compete any misguided "Big government" attempts to duplicate that which the market can provide!
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
Do you call this good? While I'm not 100% in support of community run networks (mostly due to the fact that there aren't enough smart people to run them securely in most communities), I think this illustrate the point quite well that governements no longer have power, the businesses do. After all, who has the most money? Your governments (state local and federal) or businesses? Considering the huge debt at the federal level and the deficits at state and local levels, my money (hehehe) is on the businesses controlling the most funds. And they say we have "big government", hah! It seems that during the past decade, as the tech sector has grown tremendously and gained the most wealth in a short time, more and more "laws and legal decisions" have been bought by them. We are headed rapidly for the corporate feudal system with our governments being democracies only in name. Wake up... we're only a few steps from complete fascism.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Nope - it's not about the money. It's about control. This would make my open WiFi node illegal, closing one of the few remaining anonymity gaps on the 'net.
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." - Hanlon's Razor
.. correct me if im wrong , but isnt bringing anti competitive legislation to stop competition (even if it is run by local gouverments) anti competitive in of itself. Yes reading that makes my head sping too. If the city wants to provide free or cheap broadband to its citizens then what is wrong with that , if the companys wish to compete they should have to offer something which the competition doth not. I would far rather have a state run monopoly on services , as atleast then i do have some say over the board of directors via a vote. Aslong as the gouvernment plays fair there is no reason why they should be disalowed to compete
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
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.l
http://www.freepress.net/communityinternet/=TXbil
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.
These laws make about as much sense as a law that prohibits a government from maintaining a highway system. A government, with its existing rights of way and networks, is in a prime position to build out computer networks, particulary in places where corporations don't feel they can make a profit. I'm really really tired of libertarian arguments that don't take into account all the hidden and structural subsidies that alter the landscape of the supposedly Utopian Adam Smithian Capitalist Marketplace that they claim to want to protect. True capitalism of this sort means that only the strong survive - your next door neighbor with a gun. So it's not communism when a government decides to do something - we're a community, we live together, and if our governments want to build infrastructure that benefits everyone, let them!
The flag just makes more sense than the constitution. - Judas Gutenberg
It's sad that basically these companies are trying to preserve their virtual monopolies on broadband service instead of attempting to work with communities to develop large scale community wide broad band solutions.
A company such as SBC should really be playing both sides here as they could still charge for a fat pipe to be run a town. The difference being that a municipality has the money to subsidize the pipe and basically sell the bandwith to residents at a loss. SBC makes it's money albeit slightly less than if they were to provide service to each household but money none the less.
We'll see what happens, but I'm seriously considering asking some of my neighbors to get together to lease a line from SBC and then set up a community router. It will save all of us money and I'll finally be able to get a decent connection without interference from the 8 other routers my laptop can connect to.
GOD.. R... T... F... A...!!!
It's stopping local governments from doing it!
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
So why not make it commercial and charge 1 cent for 1 year. If the law sucks, flex it.
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.
My poetry site welcomes the unusual.
It's not just that they don't want municipalities competing against them -- they don't want groups competing against them who have open books.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
...have a problem with government controlling access to the Internet? Anyone at all?
I know this is Slashdot and we're supposed to hate big buisiness and everything, but isn't government-provided Internet access just a bad idea? First off we have the fact that government can always undercut the opponent and hide the costs in taxes; few will ever complain. So clearly there's the risk that in the end we'll end up paying even more for broadband than we used to. Second, once government is involved, this throws the door wide open for "concerned mothers" to start lobbying for state-, county-, or city-wide controls on the content. You know how draconian those content filters are at government-run schools? In all likelihood these will go on municipal broadband offerings, too.
If it's like any other government service, it will be poorly and insecurely run, slow to respond (for instance, blocking ports to stem the spread of viruses), and twice as expensive as anything else. And by the time it's in, we'll be stuck with it for the rest of eternity (Amtrak, anyone?).
No comment.
I don't really understand the hue and cry from folks on this forum to have their broadband run by the a local government. Aren't you just trading one monopoly (the telco's and cable company) for another (the municipality)? In the latter case, it strikes me that you don't have the choice not to pay the government, where as if the telco and/or cable company sucks, you can decide not to pay them, which gives them an incentive to at least make sure that there service doesn't suck too bad. But with the gov't I don't see what incentive they'll have to provide good services. You're legally required to pay your taxes whether the service is good or bad.
Personally, where I live, I wouldn't mind seeing the gov't reeled in a bit. That way that can't force my neighbor (who is happy as a clam w/out broadband) to subsidize my broadband. If my broadband provider starts to suck, I'd like the option of not subsidizing someone else's broadband. I don't see any way to do this latter part if it's run by a gov't.
For a group of people strongly opposed to monopolies (e.g. micorosft), I don't really understand why you'd prefer to have some other monopoly (e.g. the local gov't) running your lives.
Is there something obvious that I'm missing?
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
..blah...blah.
1.) This legislation is despicable.
2.) Don't take my word for it. Listen to Prof. Lessig's first podcast for a thoroughly considered explanation of why this is not in our best interest.
Current initiatives for municipal broadband have a lot in common with previous attempts to set up municipal cable systems, not the least of which is that the same companies (Cox, Viacom, Adelphia, etc.) are involved.
A ID=/20050214/NEWS/502140334/1003/NEWS02) for permission to set up its own cable television service. The difference between this and the broadband proposals is that Adelphia is claiming that establishing a municipal cable network would be "overbuild," while with the broadband they're claiming that allowing a municipality to set up a broadband network would then prevent commercial companies from entering the market.
Municipal cable TV proposals aren't completely dead, they've just gone out of style. However, The city of Burlington, Vermont, is petitioning the state public service board (http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?
What do they want? If it's open markets, they should be willing to compete with municipal projects on a level playing field (i.e. one where the city can't subsidise their system through tax revenues).
If they champion "first-to-post" efficiency, then whoever builds the network first should be able to reap the benefits. Given government's alleged inefficiencies, that may mean that even if a city builds a cable or wireless network, they'd eventually have to sell it to a commercial provider if it becomes a liability to the city.
All it will take is one state allowing this before it becomes a national issue with a fight in Congress. The big cable companies are fighting this state to state at the moment, but Vermont is a very independent-minded state. IF they let Burlington proceed it wouldn't be the first time they've told an industry co-op to buzz off and set a precedent for any city that wants to do something similar either with cable or IP. I expect Adelphia to pull out every weapon they can find to stop them, but I'm hoping, as with the sign restriction laws, land development rules, and the non-returnable bottle ban, that Vermont holds its ground and lets Burlington take Adelphia on head to head.
They may ultimately fail, but I'd rather see them go down in a fair fight than see the project get bound, gagged, and tossed in Lake Champlain before it can get to the arena.
TLR
A man no more knows his destiny than a tea leaf knows the history of the East India Company
Currently in Tallahassee you can get free wireless internet both downtown and at the airport. It's called Canopy, and it basically requires you to access a website first and then it connects you. It's quite convienent in the airport while you're waiting for a plane, I haven't had a chance to use it much downtown yet.
Also, just for reference: Comcast highspeed internet without cable, $55/month. Gotta love monopolies fighting tooth and nail to hang on to their huge profits.
ce n'est pas un Sig.
I can imagine that in smaller communities and perhaps larger ones, that 'local decency groups' would force local elected officials to censor objectionable content. Since they would be you ISP it would be easy to administer community standards. I can imagine that political hacks in charge of the network creating 'routing problems' which block opposition candidates, or the local rumor mill. Heck the local police could check on your email, or see which sites you visit. While larger communities might have good separation, smaller ones might even have the police dispatcher as the overnight server support!
I think that these laws should be written to include 'fair access' in the same way that local telephone companies are starting to open their own access, sort of a carrot and stick approach.
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
Case in point: in our town, Walmart wanted to build on a green field site. By the time they got around to it zoning rules had changed, but guess what? Our small municipality could not afford the legal fees to take on Walmart. Big corporate crushing small government.
And this is the same thing again. The fact is, if small municipalities can afford to provide broadband at reasonable rates, the private suppliers should easily be able to match them. Because private enterprise is so much more efficient than public enterprise, isn't it?
Well, pardon me while I beg to differ. Why should private enterprise, with its private airplanes, hugely overpaid execs, vast corporate dick-swinging-contest headquarters, and layers of management, be so much more efficient than small community efforts where the management overhead is minimal and the project manager isn't spending most of his or her time trying to do down the internal competition for the coveted corner office job?
Private enterprise is very good at delivering capital goods cheaply, but actually not always terribly good at delivering services cheaply.
It is hard to understand on what basis private companies have the right to prevent citizens banding together to co-operate on projects, whether it be putting up a community hall or a local broadband service. Perhaps a constitutional lawyer could explain it, but an expert on the cash flow of lobby companies might do better.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
Individuals have all the same rights. But companies have more rights then individuals.
That's the so called democracy in the United States.
-=-=-=-=
I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
but then they couldn't fund it using tax-payer dollars. That is half of the appeal of municipal internet access - it is "cheap" or "free" because it is being subsidized by people who don't use it (those without computers), or who use it and are paying a disproportionate amount of the costs (the wealthy). The local telcos and cable companies are definately not providing the best bang-per-buck possible, mostly because there is not enough competition. But a small coop has it's own inefficiencies, and I would not expect them to be able to do much better than the existing broadband services on price - without sweetheart price-setting legislation forcing the hardline owners to offer their lines to the coop at whatever the politicians think is a "fair" price.
That said, even though I would not support government broadband in my community, I do not like these laws. I am a pragmatic liberterian but I also believe in democracy formost. If these comunities want thier towns to provide broadband, that is their decision to make. The federal government has no place telling the states what services they can and can't offer, and the states have no place telling the counties/towns what services they can and can't offer. Besides, the fact that there is such demand from the comunity for these services shows that the existing monopolies are not serving the people well, and creating legisation to enshrine them further is not the answer.
Try to name three things the Government does good
1. Water
2. Power (electric)
3. Sewer
There's a long history of goverment doing each of these cheaper and more reliable than the for-profit companies that take over when these utilities are privatized.
I posit that current anti-americanism is not a "hate America" or "hate Americans" posture, but "hate the imperialist behaviour of the current American government" in the name of the American people. I think Blair is being a dickhead too, but I don't translate that into a blanket anti-British feeling.
I don't get the dreamy types who view the government as some huge outside force that is imposed on them.
We are the government. We hold the power (responsibility?) to change things. If the government was considering building a municipal network in your area, as a technologically adept citizen, what would stop you from getting ahold of the people responsible, and having a sit-down talk with them about the proper way to do it? What would stop you from volunteering to administer or advise this project? What's stopping YOU from being the contractor that runs it?
Instead all I can see in this post is three paragraphs of complaints modded insightful, with not one solution proposed. That makes the parent only half a post.
Everything breaks down when everyone expects everyone else to deal with problems. So, now that the paranoid flag-waving is out of the way, I look forward to reading the solutions you propose to the problems you outlined above.
Or maybe someone else will do it for you.
Can you actually drink your tap water?
Yep. There's nothing unhealthy in it. It sometimes has a metallic taste, so I'll run it through a filter on my end, since _ANYONE_ sending water through miles of metal pipes will result in water with a metallic taste.
Please actually do some long term research rather than just pointing at messed up transitions pains.
I have. Have you? Muncipial power companies in CA were forced to privatize their serves. They're still paying tons more per KWh. So how many years will this 'transition period' last? Oh, btw, in other countries were the power grid was privatized as much as 20 years ago, they still pay a ton more per KWh (even taking inflation in to account).
Just because you don't see the $100 a month to pay for something doesn't mean it isn't there.
Well, as a municipal utility you get to see the books. If you want to know how much of your taxes are going to subsidize it, you can simply read their annual reports.
Every municipal utility I'm aware of cover their day-to-day expenses from their service fees. Some do get government funding to help for captial improvements, but many private utilties also get government funding for captial improvements.
I am of the opinion that free enterprise can always provide a service cheper than a government bureaucracy.
Unfortunately, in the majority of these markets it is not "free" enterprise, it is basically a monopoly. If the market can provide the cheaper/faster access people will choose it over the muni access.
I disagree with your opinion. :-)
But at least opinions can be changed with facts... it'd be worse if you blindly "believed" it, like many here do.
Thing is, there are areas where non-profit organizations (governments included) can and do provide cheaper (better, more efficient, more complete) service. These are mostly in areas of health care, education and infrastructure. For example, most other western countries are what many rightist politicans would consider "socialistic" health care: such systems provide for better coverage (everyone gets treated, no medical bankruptcy if you get cancer etc. etc.), at about half the price (per-capita health care spending ratio between US and other industrialized countries). Same applies to education (interestingly enough, even the cost ratio is about the same: 2-to-1 in favour of society-sponsored system). And in the infrastructure area (where municipal networks woudl be), even US has government run entities like US Post Office... so there has to be something good in there.
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
I'm in Illinois, on the danger list. Here's what I wrote to my State Senator. Feel free to use any part of this text if you wish.
Dear Senator Raoul:
I am writing to request that you take action on the amendment concerning municipal provision of communications services to Senate Bill 499. It is very important that this amendment be prevented from becoming law. The offensive text of the amendment reads as follows:
This amendment represents a spectacular example of public corruption, in which the public interest is sacrificed to curry favor with large telecommunications companies. These companies are determined to stamp out municipal provision of broadband services so as to preserve the near-monopolies they so notoriously abuse, and apparently are prepared to lavishly endow with campaign contributions any legislators who are willing to assist them.Note that this draconian legislative proposal would prevent municipalities from constructing their own broadband networks even in poor and rural areas that are under-served by the telecom industry, and that might obtain substantial economic benefits by investing in their own network infrastructure.
Note also that since there are currently several other states that have passed, or are in the process of passing similar legislation at the behest of the telecom industry, a competitive advantage will likely flow from those states to states that do not hog-tie their own citizens to prevent them from building their own high-tech infrastructure at the expense of their own tax dollars.
This piece of legislation is a scandal and an outrage. It is as if a waste management company had bribed legislators to forbid municipalities from building their own sewers or operating their own garbage trucks. I intend to track this issue very closely indeed, as it is a very high priority for me. I am certain that there are many other technology-savvy voters in this district who feel the same way.
Best Regards etc.
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