A State-By-State Guide To Restrictive Community Broadband Laws

blottsie writes On Tuesday, President Obama will unveil a dramatic push to improve broadband Internet service for people around the country through community-built municipal broadband networks. Problem is, state legislatures around the country have passed laws making it considerably more difficult for these public Internet projects to get off the ground. In some states, building municipal broadband is prohibited altogether. This piece dives into the state laws standing between us and more competitive Internet service markets.

Comments

"undercutting a private sector unable to keep up"

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> deep-pocketed government entities from undercutting a private sector unable to keep up

Funniest thing I read all day.

Re:What does it mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

It means you'd have to get a majority of your neighbors to vote for internet, and in the deep south that kind of collectivism just isn't going to happen except in one of them there big liberal cities, and the big cities have probably already signed exclusive contracts with the cable company.

Re:Hmm

[Alan Shutko]

These laws have been passed because certain municipalities have been able to successfully cover the cost and maintenance of their own networks.

Enough of the anti-city agenda

[tjstork]

Laws prohibiting municipal broadband are entirely anti-city. In a country where politics is such that cities are routinely decried (while ironically states redistribute their tax revenues to rural areas and suburbs), I think it is time to frame broadband rights as a freedom from government for cities.

Cities should be allowed to be more independent from the states that hold them. They should not be stripped of the competitive advantages that localized economies of scale provide. They should be allowed to offer their own utilities, to toll the interstates that cut through them, and they shouldn't have to pay a gasoline tax that largely serves rural interests, and above all, part of that independence should be to allow them to offer broadband.

Re:"undercutting a private sector unable to keep u

[circletimessquare]

educate yourself

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...

then form an opinion

do you honestly believe that if government wasn't there the big guys would fade away? with weak government, the power vacuum is filled even more by plutocrats. they *want* a weak government. without government you think monopolies don't or won't exist? less government means less *regulation*, they gobble up more, you get less choice buddy. and you get less legal recourse from being shafted

what you want, if you follow through on the coherent thought, is less corruption, not a weaker government that is even yet more beholden to money. not possible? study the laws on corruption in the nordic countries, you know, those evil socialist horrors that are actually richer, happier, and more upwardly mobile meritocracies than the usa pretends it is, but is rapidly losing with a shrinking middle class and corrupt congresswhores beholden to the financial powers that less government unleashes even more

good luck kid escaping the bullshit mythology