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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....
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.
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
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.
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.
Communities form local governments to collect taxes and perform various and sundry duties for the community. If the community can run a fscking library, school, water works, police department, or any other services, why the hell shouldn't they provide a telcom service?
This only seems non-obvious looking at cities like Los Angeles or New York. Go out to Tumbleweed, Idaho and suddenly the relationship to local government is pretty friggen obvious when your cousin is the judge, your neighbor is the mayor and aslo the gas station attendent. In that sense, community and government are utterly synonymous.
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.
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.
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 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