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Kansas Delays Municipal Broadband Ban
Mokurai writes with an update to a story from last week about legislation in Kansas that would have banned most municipal broadband, including the expansion of Google Fiber. Now, after the public backlash that erupted online, government officials have postponed the legislation's hearings, putting it on hold indefinitely. From the article:
"Senate Bill 304 would prohibit cities and counties from building public broadband networks. The Commerce Committee, which [Sen. Julia Lynn] chairs, was scheduled to have a hearing Tuesday, but Lynn released a statement that hearings have been postponed indefinitely. 'Based on the concerns I heard last week, I visited with industry representatives and they have agreed to spend some time gathering input before we move forward with a public hearing,' Lynn said in a statement. 'We'll revisit the topic when some of these initial concerns have been addressed.' Lynn elaborated while exiting a Senate Judiciary hearing. The senator said she has instructed 'the parties' involved with the bill to address the public’s concerns. The bill was introduced by John Federico, a cable industry lobbyist."
Comcast_blackhat_01: "They've got a better product, we'd better lobby to have them kept out for no reason. We have to protect our phoney baloney jobs here, gentlemen! We must do something about this immediately! Immediately! Immediately! Harrumph! Harrumph!"
I imagine this not even upsetting the lobbying groups. I feel they already have formulaic responses to this preliminary failure.
'We'll revisit the topic when some of these initial concerns have been addressed.'
We're going to keep introducing this legislation until people stop watching and we can pass it (see also SOPA).
They didn't delay the ban because there was never a ban in place, just like last week when public broadband expansion wasn't restricted.
There was a bill to do so. They tabled hearings on it because of public opinion. Learn the process and write intelligently about it.
...politicians. How the hell do we keep doing this?
I'm so sick of how apathetic people are.
If this happened in my state, I'd be writing letters everyday!
Not allowed to build infrastructure because it might put someone else out of business... Boo-fucking-hoo... We, as a country, have no obligation to support your flawed or failing business model...
Fucking fascist politicians... Those lobbyist presents must be wonderful, indeed! Especially seeing as how they're willing to sell out the constituents for them!
"Helping to keep you two steps ahead of the Thought Police!"
What sort of a country, whose politicians are always going on about how much they believe in freedom, would even countenance introducing such legislation?
worldmobilenet.com -- World Prepaid Wireless Internet plans
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Would it not be just as fun if we could live in world where not only our communication but also our transportation were banned from municipal participation?
Since when can a lobbyist introduce a bill? I know they write them all the time, but I thought they had to buy a legislator to actually introduce it.
The sooner these bastards get labeled common carriers the better.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
"putting it on hold indefinitely"
Let me translate: "We're putting it on hold until the uproar dies down."
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
If water, electricity, phone, and sewer were privatized prior to build out by the public, we wouldn't have any where near the infrastructure we do today. I think the same goes for Internet access. Let the public build out fiber, and then lease to any private company to provide competitive telco, internet, and entertainment products.
"The bill was introduced by John Federico, a cable industry lobbyist."
Since when do lobbyists introduce legislation?
The first link has a comment that Federico wrote the bill.
So, who was the legislator who introduced the bill? If I lived in Kansas, that the question that I would want answered. It seems that he/she has some confusion as to whom they are paid by the taxpayers to represent.
well then screw you. The people want community broadband, listen to them. Industry experts are going to tell you that they have the best way an d it will only work if they control it; which is BS.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Obviously, the cable companies and AT&T are behind on their ALEC dues or just haven't paid enough extra to get this into law, yet.
All these cities and counyries that have government-sponsored delivery rely on the throbbing dynamism of capitalism to keep generating faster and faster Interney.
Once that dries up, it turns into a festival of businessmen whining for more money, rather than innovate lest they be left behind.
As with medicine, any government can hand it out for free...once someone else invents it.
Did you know Wal Mart sells a cheap blood glucose meter that's only $10 per 50 test strips? Meanwhile oher companies produce stupid, far more expensive and unnecessary ones designed to suck the tit of medicaid -- whining for more government money rather than innovate, evolving in that direction instead, where whining to officials supercedes innovation and competition.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
It is now time for all the states who put up barriers to or outright banned municipal broadband to look at the results and see if it serves the public interest. It does not. Everywhere these bills pass the incumbent cable companies immediately shut down investment because they no longer have to provide modern service.
Washington state has such a law. Before it was enacted some municipalities were already started and so were grandfathered in. That is why you can have had gigabit fiber Internet to the home in Ephrata, WA (pop 8,000) for 14 years now, and Microsoft is building vast data centers out that way. It is also why you can't get gigabit fiber to your home in Seattle Metro area installed today, which enjoys a global peering point and is home to Microsoft, Amazon and a bunch of other big tech companies whose employees could really benefit from the service, and has 600 times the population density. This even though the cost of the equipment has come down by a factor of 100 in that 14 years.
This is just wrong.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Why can a lobbyist introduce legislation into a State Legislature? There is something seriously wrong with that.
This is code for "whoops we have opposition so what we need to do is pretend to care about citizen input and setup some 'educational' meetings." Once that dog and pony show is done they can go back to standard operating procedure and push the bill through. When people complain the politicians who get large campaign contributions from those that wrote the bill will say "you had your say and now we have to make the best decision for all residents of Kansas and the best interest of the state" or some BS like that.
What I fail to grasp is that we can and do have municipally owned water and sewer, and electricity/light companies, but we can't have municipally owned broadband? I live a in small town in New England and we have a town owned light department that was considering wiring the town with fibre until some asshat "journalist" came along, wangled an invitation to a seat on the advisory committee by virtue of his celebrity status, and proceeded to pooh-pooh the idea – effectively killing it. This was all before we had Comcast or FIOS available. Clearly Mr. Asshat wasn't there serving the town residents, although I have to wonder just who he thought he was serving. He later moved away. Good Riddance.
(Well, now we have both Comcast and FIOS, not that "competition" is doing anything to drive the price down. RCN was supposed to come in but they bailed out, reneging on their no-penalty-clause-contract with the town, during one of the economic downturns. Not that I have any faith that if they were here that there'd be any more competitive pressure on prices.)
It happens so often it's surprising legislators don't put out a price list for laws that favour your business.
Then instead of having the government install "pipes" as in physical media for data communication, have the government install literal pipes. Because utilities' so-called natural monopolies ultimately result from government ownership of roads, city governments have power to take steps to grant utility access more efficiently, as I explained further in this comment. The city would bury conduit, and utility companies would pull their own copper, fiber, or whatever through the conduit. This would start in any neighborhood scheduled for water, sewer, or natural gas maintenance.
Lots of people claim that private-sector businesses are much more efficient and cost-effective than government at providing services or producing products (and every other imaginable task). Asking for protectionist legislation that bans municipal governments from competing with businesses is a clear admission that businesses are less efficient and less cost-effective than a government solution to the problem. If businesses are really so much better at everything, they should never need legislative protection from competition. They should be able to offer customers a better product or service (or a lower price for an equivalent product or service) than the government can.
But perhaps they can.
Trust me, I work in state government in technology.
If you don't think the gov't can do a good job, then why not get out? The last thing any organization needs is people on the inside with bad attitudes.
The old, wide definition was that a domestic partnership is 2 adult humans. The new, narrower definition was that a domestic partnership is 2 adult humans, one legally male, the other legally female. If activities that were lawful under the old definition are unlawful under the new, narrower definition, this has the same effect as a ban on any activities covered by the difference in definitions. Consider the No Electronic Theft Act of 1997, which banned U.S. warez groups from using a ratio trading system by expanding the definition of "financial gain" that the criminal copyright infringement statute uses.
"they have agreed to spend some time gathering input"
In other words, they asked for more time to put together their war plan and to consult with AT&T about how they successfully pulled off South Carolina's municipal broadband ban.
Funny how the cable industry enjoined these municipalities for right-of-way in the early 60's through the 70's when local cable companies merged. I remember when cable rates were set at city council meetings and the federal grants given for the buildouts.
The last mile has been held hostage by telephone and cable monopolies. What they don't want to see is fiber to the premises.
The real issue here is that this entire legislative package was written by the Telcos lobby group, and then pushed into the house. At what pint did we let the politicians off the hook for thinking for themselves, and just taking a corporate payoff. Democracy is destroyed when you let these scumbags corporate thugs write the laws. The only reason this got stopped is the publicity. How often is our democracy stolen by these thieves.
Having 'grown up' in rural central USofA, a farm and railroad 'town': a THOUSAND times YES, do away with all farm subsidies and let the market work. ... well, they should be made to grub in the dirt with the chickens.
My high-school peers who decided to stay on the land deserve every penney they can EARN for their product. Conversly, the [expletive deleted] suit weasels I deal with on a daily basis as a licensed and state registered 'technology' expert should
But the prospect for internet TV, where every single viewing results in a separate TCP/IP feed
For any channel with more than a few viewers per neighborhood, that would be poor engineering compared to multicast. Only video on demand really needs an individual TCP stream per user.
Google is killing everybody else. I moved to a working class neighborhood in KC to get a cheap house and Google Fiber. Google has the ILECs running scared as almost all of my neighbors signed up for at least the 5 down/1 up Mbps "free" option, and will be dropping their existing cable/DSL contracts when up.
The Kansas legislature is made up almost entirely of rapid Tea Party half-wits that are taking money from the ILECs or anybody else with money to buy them off. The ONLY reason this was postponed was due to the ongoing blizzard that has the Statehouse shut down this week...
The bill was introduced by John Federico, a cable industry lobbyist.
Really? Since when do lobbyists have standing to introduce bills in the Kansas Senate?
Perhaps the bill was written by industry figures and proposed to a senator by this lobbyist. But it was the senator who introduced it. Stating HIS name, too, and clearly describing the process, might have some effect on this guy's chances for reelection.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
John Federico, should be burned alive in the town square.
Local government is the only hedge most people have against massive corporations. It should be pretty obvious why the large corporations want them neutered.
They HATE government regulations...until they're conspiring with Big Business to suppress competition. Interesting note, yesterday one of the silliest laws in the history of our country was repealed. It banned Southwest Airlines from flying outside of Texas from Dallas-Fort Worth. The law was passed to suppress Southwest Airlines when they first started out and protect existing airlines.
http://www.foxnews.com/travel/2014/02/03/southwest-airlines-to-offer-nonstop-routes-from-dallas-to-15-cities/
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Well, I don't think municipal fiber is any harder to do than highways, which many states seem to do reasonably well, although not all do equally well.
I've worked as an IT vendor wiith state and local governments across the country, and there's good people working in most of them, although some states government workers are so reviled that the proportion of strong workers is disastrously low. Some governments are better at getting things done than others. The think that government agencies don't do well at is agile response to novel situations. Fortunately, this is no longer cutting edge stuff.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
People are starting to get into the habit of speaking up and speaking out. They are taking action and it may start to become increasingly fashionable to do so. (In fact, I would urge for people to make it increasingly fashionable to do so.) The 80s was a period of what many thought was a renaissance but was actually a backward step for US and human culture. This whole "looking out for #1" thing really did a number on people. The sophisticated and respected wisdom of urban dwellers such as those found in New York and Chicago informs people that they should just mind their own business and not get involved. Murder and mayhem next door? Don't get involved. Don't see anything. Don't know anything.
But we are all beginning to realize that this does nothing to insulate us or protect us in any way. Today, we are ALL "random" targets of criminals, government and criminal government. We either hang together or we hang separately.
Koch brothers, creationism in the classroom... So glad i got out in the 90s. My home state is nothing but a source of shame on an almost daily basis.
In Kansas City Google offers that if you pay 500$ to run a fiber line to your house you will have free Google fiber for life as long as you remain at that residence. This is scarring Cox Communications who have a monopoly on broad band service in Kansas. Other then Cox your only other choice for broadband is AT&T and nobody wants that slow mess. They have total control in Kansas and can charge outrageous prices for their service and damn do they want to keep it that way.
The plan for Google is to choose choice cities in central locations then allow other companies to spring up and spread fiber to neighboring cities untill it covers all areas. This bill would of directly stopped this and left cox communications in total power of Kansas.
We can not let any government grant a monopoly to a corporation just because it can hurt their profits.
Here are the bastards lobbying on Cox Communications behalf:
http://federicoconsultinginc.com/
Call them up and ask them how much for their soul.. because they have no morals.
"I visited with industry representatives and they have agreed to spend some time gathering input before we move forward with a public hearing"
I read this is, "I need more time to let Comcast and Time Warner buy off a few more politicians on the board. Then we'll ram it through regardless of what people think."