Running List of Barriers to Municipal Competition

batageek writes "In keeping with recent stories on Municipal Broadband, Jim Baller (Muni Telco lawyer/god)has kept a running tab of all the Bell/Cable company-introduced anti-municipal broadband legislation around the country."

Comments

Re:I wish I was a little bit taller

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot to say "First Psot!!11!!", troll.

Anyway, for convenience, here's the HTML version from Google's cache: http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:tr5oNAnL7nIJ:ww w.baller.com/pdfs/baller_proposed_state_barriers.p df+baller_proposed_state_barriers&hl=en

A potential solution

[VolciMaster]

I'm all for private business providing any service it can. And any private sector business, no matter how crappy, should not be competed against by the government.

That said, I am also all for bringing technology to people who "couldn't otherwise afford it". I would like to see any municipal network be limited to just 802.11b, or perhaps even slower. 'Free' access can be had by anyone, but if you want faster service, you will need to go with a private business.

Some universities do this now. They allow anyone to use the wireless network, but until you register your MAC address with the authentication server(s), you're limited to a very slow connection (the one I'm most familiar with limits to sub 14kbps). After you register your computer (using some school-issued authentication system), you have access to the full bandwidth of the network.

So, allow the cities to install whatever low-speed networks they want, but aim to take market share from people who are willing to pay for faster service.