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North Carolina Still Wants To Block Municipal Broadband
An anonymous reader writes: In February, when the FCC rolled out its net neutrality rules, it also voted to override state laws that let Texas and North Carolina block ISPs created by local governments and public utilities. These laws frequently leave citizens facing a monopoly or duopoly with no recourse, so the FCC abolished them. Now, North Carolina has sued the FCC to get them back. State Attorney General Roy Cooper claims, "the FCC unlawfully inserted itself between the State and the State's political subdivisions." He adds that the new rule is "arbitrary, capricious, and an abuse of discretion within the meaning of the Administrative Procedure Act; and is otherwise contrary to law."
Because FUCK YOU , that's why.
You have to admire the hypocracy of state legislators who argue for "state's rights", who don't care about "city and county rights" to roll out broadband to attract jobs and new people to their area. It's almost like they were hypocrites, ignorant of freshman economics, sold to the highest bidder or something... /Lives in Tennessee, has the same bunch of ignorant cretins passing laws that an 18 year old freshman could easily shoot down as dumb.
>> laws frequently leave citizens facing a monopoly or duopoly with no recourse, so the FCC abolished them
Um...how many cable network providers do YOU have where you live? Does ANYONE have three (3) or more?
State Attorney General Roy Cooper claims, "the FCC unlawfully inserted itself between the State and the State's political subdivisions."
Not to mention that municipal broadband providers won't kick back as much in campaign finance support as the major cable companies. The FCC is really going to cut into that revenue stream pretty heavily with these rules.
While it seems like the federal government is out of line taking the right to govern away from the states, in reality it is the states that are taking away the right to govern from local governments that ACTUALLY WANT municipal broadband.
Ensuring that municipalities maintain their rights to roll out local broadband isn't a perversion of states rights, its preventing states rights from perverting local rights.
I really don't understand it either. If the government entity receives no unfair treatment and has to play by the same rules as every other company, there's no reason why a local municipality shouldn't be able to collectively decide that they want to take a crack at creating something better.
It seems that some people are more anti-government than they are pro-market or have become so accustomed to making the same argument that they're not even bothering to look at the issue at hand.
At least it makes sense for the politicians to oppose it. They probably get all kinds of brib^H^H^H^Hcontributions from the companies that are paying for these monopoly rights.
EPB in Chattanooga is only about 50 miles from Murphy, NC. If they showed interest in expanding, it becomes interstate commerce and, therefore, a federal matter. (I'm not a lawyer, so YMMV.)
They'll get my encryption algorithm when they pry it from my cold, dead hard drive.
It would end up being like Amtrak.
So you're saying Amtrak is worse than Comcast. Yes?
I live in Longmont, Colorado. Couple years ago we had a referendum and opted out of the state's blocking of municipal broadband services. They're currently rolling the service out in my neighborhood and their guys did an install at my house about a month ago. I'm getting the fastest internet service in the country for $59 a month. My youtube uploads go at around a gigabyte a minute. Too bad about all these state legislators who seem to feel the need to protect their constituents from super-fast internet speeds at affordable rates that the private companies never seem to feel the need to deliver. I guess luckily for them, most people have no idea what they're missing, or a lot of those guys would be getting kicked out of office right now.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The South rises again!
"The South's Gonna Do It Again!!"
"Do what? Lose?"
The state government is saying that the federal government has no right to interfere with the state's right to interfere with local government.
I'm a Democrat living in North Carolina. Roy Cooper is the Democratic Attorney General who plans to run for Governor in two years. He is interested in campaign contributions from the telecom industry. That's why he opposes municipal broadband even when private companies have no intention of offering it to an area. He thinks regular voters are not paying attention so there is only upside for him in this. This is the same Att. Gen. Cooper who opposed gay marriage in NC until the courts forced it to happen. He is not impressing me. Hope he has some competition in the 2017 Democratic Primary for Governor.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
In some areas, the major ISPs haven't provided any wired, high-speed access. In this case, the local governments - after trying to get the major ISPs to come in and wire the town and being shot down by the ISPs - want to wire themselves. They are being prevented by doing so by the state who is acting on the request of the ISPs - who don't want any competition even if it's in an area they refuse to service. Assuming the citizens of the local town vote to form a municipal broadband service, why should the ISPs who have refused to service the town have more say in whether or not the municipal broadband network gets deployed than the public?
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Utter bullshit. The welfare of the citizens affected is not really a consideration to anyone with a dog in this fight. Let's get that part right, at least.
Everyone knows that it's a powerful telecommunications lobby flexing it's muscle in a state where there are lots federal dollars being spent on that industry's services. You don't piss off the industry who paid for your last election, be that for local, state, or federal office, so the whole argument about who has the "right" to look out for those citizens is nothing more than a deliberate distraction for the suckers (voters) who continue to act against their own best interests by electing Big Telco's whores to public office.
Municipal broadband is a good thing. It might not be a needed item in population centers. But once you get outside of those areas and into "the sticks" your options disappear just as quickly as all the other traces of modern civilization. You're left with two, one, or sometimes no option.
My company currently has the best internet connection it's ever had in almost 20 years, provided by wireless point-to-point from the nearest city. In terms of cost, uptime, bandwidth, you name it, this connection is better in every category. The ILEC in the area (Frontier, formerly Verizon, formerly GTE) can't event begin to compete. All they offer is T1. Comcast just started to pull cable, but why would I choose to switch the worst company in the western hemisphere for an inferior solution? Besides, we all know what Comcast has to offer.
I'm going to stick with the better solution provided by the local government. If something better comes along, great. If anyone in my state's capitol starts to try to make this illegal they will hear from me ad nauseam.
You people don't understand because you seem to be working under the assumption that politicians are out to serve the public, and that this is somehow an ideological issue. If you look at it instead as "scumbag politicians, acting purely in their own self-interest, soliciting big campaign donations from cablecos/telcos" it makes a lot more sense, doesn't it?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Well, there is the argument that no matter how many rules you make, the municipality automatically has an unfair advantage. And this is true. The municipality gets to set the rules, by definition they have a better position than the telcos. If TWC wants to run cable, they need to raise money from existing customers or investors, get permits and approval from the municipality, buy property or usage rights and then maintain a customer base to pay for maintenance.
If the municipality wants to run cable, they can (in order from least to most likely to piss people off) float a bond, raid the educational funds or simply hike taxes, they can then run cable wherever they want, citing "public good" for the taking of private land or the usage of private land, and then they can simply tax the populous to fund and maintain, even if there are no customers.
Muni broadband may or may not be a good thing, and the exclusive monopoly contracts a mostly a bad thing, but that doesn't mean that muni and commercial broadband could ever be considered to operate on an equal playing field.
Move to Chattanooga. It's one of the few cities in the southeast that built up a hugely successful municipal broadband fiber-optic system before the telcos bribed the state legislators into killing them off everywhere else. It's like an island paradise in the sea of shit (which the scumbag legislators of TN have been trying to sink for years).
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
I think that government should not try and compete in a functioning market, but they definitely should have the right (and the inclination) to step in when the market fails. Set a reasonable minimum service, e.g. allow muni broadband if there are less than 3 market players having offered a plan with x Mb/s with an allowance of y GB/month for at most €z/month in the last 12 months or whatever. The incumbent telcos then have a choice to join the 21st century, or compete against the municipality.
Also, if local government is using public funds to run fiber, allow other telcos the use of that fiber at cost. Same as many countries forced the incumbent, formerly state owned telcos to open up part of their infra to newcomers on the market.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Muni's should make a level playing field. We have the tech to do it, a single fiber per home/business (ok maybe more for business) can with cheap passive gear provide 8+ different connections (bidirectional CWDM). So the muni's role is the physical plant they provide a point for all comers to connect possibly a L2 network for others to build upon and to provide baseline services.
Part of all that is to stop thinking in IPv4, it's trivial for a town to get enough IPv6 IP's to hand out /64 or greater to everybody. That makes it trivial for a single firewall to connect up multiple networks and route correctly. So you might end you with a muni network the connects muni services, schools etc etc. Your ISP who may or may not bundle cable phone etc but you could get IP based phone/cable from others and still have 4 free CWDM bands for later expansion.
No sir I dont like it.
Dialup forever! - Long distance charges may apply.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
You people don't understand because you seem to be working under the assumption that politicians are out to serve the public, and that this is somehow an ideological issue. If you look at it instead as "scumbag politicians, acting purely in their own self-interest, soliciting big campaign donations from cablecos/telcos" it makes a lot more sense, doesn't it?
Your idea is also an opposite extreme assumption. In other words, one should keep BOTH assumptions in mind and do not whole heartedly believe in only one extreme assumption, then it would make a lot more sense.
If the government can provide a fast pipe at a reasonable price with good service why would I not want it? I don't necessarily think it is the best possible option but I certainly wouldn't dismiss it out of hand. My local government provides lots of services quite competently. If they can provide a better value than private companies I certainly don't care.
It would end up being like Amtrak.
I've ridden Amtrak. I don't see that as an insult. Amtrak provides a fine service despite being required to provide service on unprofitable routes. My question is why the government isn't putting MORE money into passenger rail, particularly for regional travel. Taking a plane from Cleveland to Columbus is silly but high speed train service could make a lot of sense if it were adequately supported. We spend ridiculous sums of taxpayer money on roads and airports but for some bizarre reason we think rail service is a boondoggle.
there's no reason why a local municipality shouldn't be able to collectively decide that they want to take a crack at creating something better.
No, you see, "local municipality" is just a codeword for "big government", so the problem is that you don't want big government doing things like running utilities, because fascism, and when you have big government (i.e. a council of a town with a population of 1,000 people) competing against the free market and small business (i.e., Comcast), then that's unfair because monopoly. Not Comcast's monopoly, the monopoly that big government would have (because it's the government, duh). Also, small businesses like Comcast could not compete with big government like the council of a town with a population of 1,000 people.
Hope that clears it up for you.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
If you want to believe that politicians aren't just a bunch of amoral, self-serving scumbags, you go right on ahead.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
I'm really not trying to troll but am curious about the outlook of US citizens. It seems that many people, at least on here, are in favour of having their local government act as an ISP. I find this attitude so weird because there is such a reluctance to move to a government backed health care system, even one that is only funded by the government and provided by private firms. So why is government health care socialism and bad while government internet access good?
Ignoring your double negative, it's because the town doesn't want to pay obscene 90+% profit margins that leave the town and don't help its economy. They want to pay the upfront costs using a bond, then run the broadband service at cost.
Private companies know they can't compete with a service run at cost, and that's why they lobby to ban them outright.
The people of the town can elect or depose the leaders of city hall.
What do you mean?
<snip>
Also, small businesses like Comcast could not compete with big government like the council of a town with a population of 1,000 people.
Have you got a license to use that much sarcasm in one post? That exceeded the unlicensed sarcasm allowance. You'll need to file a form and pay a fee. The queue forms on the left. The office is open on alternate Tuesdays if the previous Wednesday was a full moon.
If a politician, *especially* a local politician, wants to keep the job then the self-interest motivation says to listen to those local voters who live within walking distance. Thus I would trust the motivations of the local politician here over that of the distant and impersonal broadband corporation. It does not seem clear that the local politicians are opposing Comcast and TWC merely because of huge profits to be made, but instead they want their own local broadband because this is what the voters have been asking for (not 100% of them of course).
I could be wrong of course, but I suspect that the needs of the cable and broadband users in those munipalities are of absolutely no interest to Comcast, or any customer anywhere in the world for that matter. But the needs of the local cable and broadband users matter to the local politicians, to some amount greater than or equal to zero.
At the very very least, let the free market sort if out. Oh wait, we have a monopoly here so there is no free market, and state laws forbidding the creation of competition from local boards.