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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.
Exclusive franchises for cable companies have been prohibited by the FCC..
The Communications Act authorizes local franchising authorities to grant one or more franchises within their jurisdiction. However, a local franchising authority may not grant an exclusive franchise, and may not unreasonably withhold its consent for new service.
Chattanooga lost their credit rating did to overwhelming debt from their government broadband attempt
No. This, at least, is unsubstantiated FUD.
From Forbes.com:
In fact, contrary to Stephenson’s claims that municipal broadband hurt municipal credit ratings, S&P just upgraded the Chattanooga public utility’s bond rating, stating, “The system is providing reliable information to the electric utility on outages, losses and usage, which helps reduce the electric system’s costs.”
A quick google search of Chattanooga and broadband turned up multiple articles agreeing that their local internet deployment has been a roaring success, particularly in bringing a new wave of business and revenue to the city.
Not every city is successful, but that's no reason for states to prohibit them from trying, if nothing else to give the monopolists an incentive to improve their crappy race-to-the-bottom service.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
It's interstate commerce, so of course the federal government gets to regulate it. Up until it goes to the SCOTUS and the conservative appointees decide that it's time to gut th interstate commerce clause again like they did with health care.
Bottom line here is that the main purpose of the internet is interstate and intercountry commerce, relatively few people exclusively use content in the same state in which it was produced.