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

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.

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:What does it mean?

[dbreeze]

And 99.9% of that 82% are likely within a larger metroplitan area........
I also pulled this from your link.... "Given that approximately 96% of the population has at most two wireline providers, there are reasons to be concerned about wireline broadband competition in the United States."

(I've told this story on here before but it needs re-telling....)
  I moved to a rural NC area about 10-12 years ago and desired to start a computer shop but soon discovered that dial-up was all that was available. At that time satellite was prohibitively expensive for my meager funds and not that much faster. I heard about the state legislature enacting a new "E-NC" initiative to facilitate rural connectivity and with a cell tower only a few hundred yards across a field from me I decided maybe I could try a wireless internet service venture instead. I found a contact number and had a very interesting conversation with the director of the E-NC initiative at that time....
  I explained my situation and idea to him and asked about the possibility of getting funding to try a start-up to service my local areas internet needs. He told me that they had exhausted the funds set aside on 3 projects already. They had researched each proposed area, contacted the local phone/cable companies and verified that they had no plans of pursuing high-speed internet options in the area, and then released the funds for the start-ups. As soon as the funds were released the phone companies suddenly announced they would begin DSL service in 2 of the areas, effectively killing those start-ups. In both cases it was Sprint(later to become Embarq) who pulled the shenanigans. Of course, they also controlled the area I lived in. We didn't get a DSL option for another 6-7 years when the 3g wireless options came around and finally made them move.....
  Big money/corporations are(generally) evil...... jus' sayin'........