Bill Would Reverse Bans On Municipal Broadband

Yuppie writes "A bill introduced to the House this week would overturn bans that currently exist in several states that forbid cities and towns building and deploying their own broadband networks. The big telecoms may not be be too happy about the bill, however: 'The telecoms have historically argued that municipalities that own and operate — or even build and lease — broadband networks could give themselves preferential treatment. The Act anticipates that argument with a section on "competition neutrality." Public providers would be banned from giving themselves any "regulatory preference," which should create a level playing field for all broadband providers. Municipalities interested in getting into the broadband business would also have to solicit feedback from the private sector on planned deployments.' The full text of the bill (pdf) is available from Rep. Boucher's website."

Comments

Heaven Forbid..

[sieb]

municipalities get fed up at the empty promises the Telco's give them about getting them wired, and how they can't make money if the municipality does it themselves.. Given how the Telco's already squandered the millions of dollars that were supposed to be used for upgrading broadband, I would be in favor of locking out Telco's all together. Like hell I am going to pay for my city to upgrade its broadband only to hand it over to a corporation to get neutered, all the while they [the telco] will complain that "this setup sucks, if you had let us install it as we promised, it would have been better!"

Re:postal roads?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ya know, I keep thinking about the Constitution's mandate to build postal roads, and I'm still having trouble understanding why the national government is not the primary interstate ISP, and why the state and local governments are not the primary state and local ISPs. Well, the US government generally didn't build the railroads in the US, nor does the government own the rail lines today. Private companies are pretty good at building and operating this kind of infrastructure if the government gives them appropriate incentives and keeps them under a good level of regulation.

Of course, the railroads kind of crapped out during the 1960s and 1970s, but that's because they were now competing against the interstate highway system... which was a competition they had no chance of winning, because the government has arbitrarily deep pockets.

It's a good thing

[Odonian]

Our internet service comes from our light department. Our town has no cable, and DSL covers only about half the town due to it's size. Last year the municipal light dept rolled out WiMax. It's not perfect, but it's damn better than dial-up. Before they went ahead though they had to write a letter to Verizon to get permission to enter the market, presumably due to this law or fear of it. Fortunately Verizon said yes (our town has only 1500 or so homes in it, so they probably didn't care - too busy rolling Fios out to people who already have broadband I guess) If Verizon had said no for some reason though, my phone line would be busy right now, and I probably wouldn't have loaded this article yet. So yes it's a good thing for competition in existing broadband markets, but it may also encourage other frightened municipalities from providing missing service.

Re:preferential treatment

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean, free local calls and virtually 100% uptime? Cheaper long-distance than anywhere else in the world? A wide variety of options in Long Distance carriers, a largely unregulated market for VoIP? Most of Europe requires address confirmation for Skype-In, for instance, or doesn't even have the option.

What exactly was better about phone service under the AT&T monopoly? It was before my time, but its reputation was for shit.

What ever happened to state's rights?

[j1mmy]

Which part of the U.S. Constitution authorizes Congress to do this? Does the 10th amendment mean anything anymore?

Re:preferential treatment

[thanatos_x]

With respect, insightful? Yes, it is true that the telecoms do give themselves preferential treatment, but such an ill-formed comment. Yes, the fact that we pay more for ten plus times less is very very sad, but this isn't digg... Vocabulary. A more elegant weapon for a more civilized time. See also capitalization.