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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.
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.
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 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
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.
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...
Dialup forever! - Long distance charges may apply.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
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