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

Comments

Work around?

[flex941]

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?

Call a spade a spade

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Don't blame the courts.

[Spazmania]

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.

Confused

[stealth_finger]

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"?

Re:Right.

[RatPh!nk]

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.....

Re:Right.

[dingleberrie]

I think it's because doctors don't approve laws for doctors, but politicians approve laws for politicians.