Slashdot Mirror
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!"
'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.
No one votes on issues anymore. Everyone has been conditioned to vote based on identity politics.
const "I am a (voting_block_01), therefore, I vote for (party_01)."
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.
Ones that had an interest it keeping rural internet access viable. Internet access is ONLY profitable in city centers. Telco monopolies in these areas are why people in rural areas even have phone service, let alone internet. The telco is required to provide service to any existing home in the area so they spread out the cost. If cities continue to allow competition into the only part of the market that's profitable and not put the same requirements on these new ISPs as the telcos, then the telcos will fail and there will be no rural phone and internet service. Look at the current cable footprint in your town... that's the ONLY place internet will be available without a cellphone if this continues. Do you want that?
I don't like monopolies either, but there's a reason telcos are setup the way they are... and it has nothing to do with helping them make lots of money. In fact, it significantly hurts their bottom line. If you let them compete on equal footing (i.e. removed service requirements) They'd drop their rural customers in a heartbeat and destroy Google and others almost immediately because they already have all the infrastructure in place.
Elections, sadly, have little to do with this. The ban was introduced by a lobbyist group representing big telecom companies. When the outcry emerged, the lobbyist group declared they'd rewrite the bill. Then, the lobbyist group called for the bill to be withdrawn. The legislators are mere middlemen doing what the lobbyists tell them to do. We could save money and get rid of the legislators entirely. Just let lobbyist groups hash out what the laws will be. (Not saying this will be better. Just that we'd at least save on salaries for worthless legislators.)
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
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.
They already took billions to get internet to rural areas and then didn't do it anyway. We're done playing that ridiculous game. If you want to live out in the boonies, it's up to you to get your own internet (through satellite or whatever means necessary).
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Why can a lobbyist introduce legislation into a State Legislature? There is something seriously wrong with that.
if (getContribution(ATT) > getContribution(COMCAST))
vote(ATT);
else
vote(COMCAST);
That sort of thing? That's what we have now.
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.
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.
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