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Appeals Court Decision Kills North Carolina Town's Gigabit Internet (hothardware.com)
MojoKid writes: In early August, the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled the FCC had no authority to prevent states from imposing restrictions on municipal internet. This was a result of the FCC stepping in last year in an effort to "remove barriers to broadband investment and competition." However, the courts sided with the states, which said that the FCC's order impeded on state rights. In the end, this ruling clearly favored firmly entrenched big brand operators like Time Warner Cable, Comcast, and ATT, which lobbied hard to keep competition at bay. The federal ruling specifically barred municipal internet providers from offering service outside of their city limits, denying them from providing service to under-served communities. The fallout from the federal court's rejection of the FCC order to extend a lifeline to municipal internet providers has claimed another victim. The small community of Pinetops, North Carolina -- population 1,300 -- will soon have its gigabit internet connection shut off. Pinetops has been the recipient of Greenlight internet service, which is provided by the neighboring town of Wilson. The town of Wilson has been providing electric power to Pinetops for the past 40 years, and had already deployed fiber through the town in order to bolster its smart grid initiative. What's infuriating to the Wilson City Council and to the Pinetop residents that will lose their high-speed service is that the connections are already in place. There's no logical reason why they should be cut off, but state laws and the lobbyists supporting those laws have deemed what Greenlight is doing illegal. Provide power to a neighboring town -- sure that's OK. Provide better internet to a neighboring town -- lawsuit
Arrest anyone that tries to shut it off.
At the very least, service should keep running until someone else provides service. It's not as if Comcast is going to provide service within anyone's lifetime just because Greenlight stops.
Don't blame the states, blame the big corporations and blame us for looking the other way while we got to the situation, where $2.6 billion of reported lobbying (bribery) donations are given to the House and Senate every year.
An European here cannot comprehend what's preventing creating a Pinetop Municipal Broadband Company which will provide the connection to locals and contractually buying bandwidth/network and other related services from the Wilson guys?
In the end, this ruling clearly favored firmly entrenched big brand operators like Time Warner Cable, Comcast, and ATT, which lobbied hard to keep competition at bay.
Can we just call a spade a spade, and treat "lobbying" as a bribe? I'm getting sick of seeing this blatant corruption.
Blame North Carolina for passing a bad law. The courts did no more than affirm the states' right to regulate their municipalities.
While you're at it, blame Wilson for overreaching. They could have made a case for installing basic infrastructure (fiber optic cable, no different than roads) and then leasing it by the strand to individuals and businesses to connect to the Internet provider of their choice. And invited providers to enter the market and compete, now with the ease-of-entry facilitated by last-mile infrastructure. Instead they made the same bad decision most municipalities make: run a municipal Internet service with no direct access to the cable for other purposes.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Is this basically the state saying to its people "fuck you, you can't have good internet because it's not sold by our buddies who would rip you off if they could be bothered, but they can't. So again, fuck you"?
Wanna buy a shirt?
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I have plenty of problems with my own particular representative thank you very much. My whole life I've been 'represented' by corporate friendly religious pandering stooges whose opinions for the most part couldn't be more opposite to my own.
Every time a bad law is debated or one of these corporate giveaways like TPP comes up, I already know how my particular useless waste of flesh will vote on it without even looking. I just ask myself what vote would be in favor of actual human citizens and sure enough he'll vote the opposite.
Leaving aside the "OH NOES! TAXES!" BS, the statement you quote never suggests that supplying Internet access is "charitable" or "unprofitable". It says "the majority of the area does not present enough profitability to attract the private-sector investment", not "the majority of the area does not present profit to attract the private-sector investment".
The private sector generally doesn't invest in projects to make small amounts of profit, especially if they're expensive. There are many, many, examples of projects that would more than pay for themselves that you'll never see the private sector take an interest in, because the promise of a 10% return here for a medium risk is unattractive compared to the promise of 100% there, for little or no risk.
As for taxes, I personally like paying taxes. As a wise man once said, in return I get civilization.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
This court decision is not binding on the state of North Carolina. The Sixth Circuit covers Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. North Carolina is in the Fourth Circuit. Decisions in other circuits are merely persuasive authority, not binding. Only the Supreme Court can do that.
Anonymous Cowards generally receive no replies because you're a coward and I'm a bitch
Based on that flawed logic, most of the rural US would still be lacking power and phone service. Rural communities using taxes to establish essential utilities is a long standing tradition in this nation and is a big part of what has made this country so strong.. Libertarians have some great ideas but usually take them too far.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
Blame the politicians for taking bribes, or being influenced by deep pocket corporations. People can demand these monopoly laws be removed, the voting record of the state politicians is a matter of public record so you know who to blame. Politicians only get away with this corruption because the voters don't care. Also spin off the municipal broadband as a private corporation and they can keep it running.
Blame "us" why? You say to blame "us" like we could do something about it. What would you have "us" do other than read news articles and say how bad it is? There is literally nothing "the People" can do about this kind of injustice. American democracy is a sick joke.
Precisely why the overwhelming public perception right now is that the only fix to vote for an outsider candidate and blow it the hell up.
Yeah let's turn this into an LGBT issue, that'll make things more progressive.
You may actually be onto something here. If we can somehow define municipal broadband as an LGBT right, no court can stop it.
I'm a doctor - MD type. I can't take a pen or a lunch without being accused of having a terrible bias and being "on the take" with "big Pharma" but politicians can literally take tens or even hundreds of thousands actual US dollars (maybe millions) then write (or have written for them) clearly bribed legislation and this is normal. Hmmmm.....
Argh. The laws of science be a harsh mistress.
I think it's because doctors don't approve laws for doctors, but politicians approve laws for politicians.