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City ISP Makes Broadband Free Because State Law Prohibits Selling Access (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A municipal ISP that was on the verge of shutting off Internet service outside its city boundaries to comply with a state law has come up with a temporary fix: it will offer broadband for free. The free Internet service for existing customers outside Wilson, North Carolina, will be available for six months, giving users more time to switch to an alternative. But Wilson also hopes that six months will be enough time to convince elected officials to change the state law that prohibits the municipal ISP from selling Internet service to non-residents. As [Ars Technica] covered previously, the Federal Communications Commission voted in February 2015 to preempt laws in North Carolina and Tennessee that prevent municipal broadband providers from expanding outside their territories. Greenlight Community Broadband in Wilson subsequently began offering service outside of Wilson. But officials in both states sued the FCC and in August won reinstatement of their laws that protect private ISPs from municipal competitors. In mid-September, the Wilson City Council reluctantly voted to turn off the fiber Internet service it provides to customers outside Wilson city limits. But that decision was reversed in a City Council vote last week, The Wilson Times reported. (The news came to our attention today via DSLReports.) A Wilson Times editorial reported: "City leaders are walking a tightrope as they balance their desire to keep Vick Family Farms in rural Nash County and 200 customers in the Edgecombe County town of Pinetops connected to Greenlight with their obligation to obey a federal court ruling that blocks the municipal broadband service from branching out beyond county lines. The council agreed Thursday night to provide six months of free internet access and phone service to Greenlight customers outside Wilson County while Wilson lobbies the General Assembly for permission to keep the town connected on a permanent basis."
...government is best, right? Right? Nope, actually they just suck up to the Corporations a bit faster than Democrats, sadly. If only they had not screwed up by forcing Hillary on us as the non-Trump instead of Bernie. Sigh....
It is wonderful that no monopoly can control cable service. And it was brilliant of Wilson to invent this tactic. We also need a situation in which multiple cable companies could connect to the same home so that price competition becomes a real part of able services. I have also noticed a reduction of quality programming even on th expensive, cable channels. Content competition is slipping as more and more people get rid of their cable connections. It very much reminds me of the traditional TV channels that became so saturated with advertising as well as cheaper and cheaper content that regular TV became useless. If regular TV wants eyeballs they simply must vastly lessen advertising as well as making serious investments in top notch programming. Frankly capitalism has destroyed regular TV and our theaters are sort of belly up at the same time.
I am pro municipal internet, but selling internet access outside your territories is something else entirely. And it is not needed. If the other municipality wants to provide its citizens with internet access as well they can decide to do it themselves.
However, at that stage they should be allowed to cooperate in order to work more efficiently and safe public money.
Is it legal for the municipality to sell water or electric service outside it territory? I can see a similar set of problems and the reason the law is in place.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Looks like the lobby that asked for an anti-competition law didn't do a good job.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
If the other municipality is too small (or nonexistent, in rural areas some 'towns' are small enough that the only law enforcement is state police) why shouldn't they be able to contract to the neighboring municipality?
Sell a license instead of a service/product...
Maybe they could consider creating an intermediate entity (company) within the municipality that purchases service then sublets service outside. Depending of course on how thoroughly the law addresses that kind of thing.
A lot of people had problems selling games by mail (this is before civilian use of the Internet was widespread, and high school grads got typewriters as gifts if they were college bound) in Canada, due to the market.
But I looked at business law and taxes and realized you could set up a game business that didn't sell the actual game, it sold the service (kind of like microtransactions, where the game is free). This meant lower tax rates, higher tax deductions, and since it was a service and not a product no problems with customs or trade barriers.
The same goes with providing Internet. Make the physical part (installation) free and have them pay later once they decide it's good enough and the morons stopping Internet competition by ISPs can be dealt with.
Anyone under 35 will go, "Cool!" Older people will think it's free cause they don't get how this works. Everyone wins!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
While I'm certain this will not go uncontested, I hope more cities follow their example so that corporate puppets do not attempt to prohibit municipal ISPs.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
They could still sell access to the city wide network and provide the internet access as an optional free add-on.
Don't sell it. Give it to them. Make maintenance a tax assessment, just like sewage, roads, etc.
working out for NC? On the plus side it looks like they're gonna go Blue for the presidential so it's likely they're just a victim of gerrymandering and the flood of corporate dollars into local elections...
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I wonder if a crowd funding solution would still be possible? Granted I doubt everyone would contribute but it might be enough to extend it even a few more months..
That is, either offer municipal broadband or offer for-profit broadband outside the city. What compelling reason is there for a single company to do both?
If they're not allowed to sell access, then don't. Sell something else, at the same price, but provide the fiber free with that package.
As a local government, I'm sure they could sell access to local government services for a fee.
State governments in the pockets of corporations? Who knew?
What's that you say? Corporations own the Federal government too? I'll be damned.
It really seems that municipal governments are the last, (but admittedly shaky) bastions of functioning democracy in North America. Heaven help us when the corporate cancer swallows them entirely as well.
As Frank Zappa said, "The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater."
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Couldn't the utility just spin off the internet business into Wilson NC internet Inc?
Good to see the green shoots of socialism springing up througb the cracks in America's tired old capitalist system!
Just make the Mexicans pay for it!
"both states sued the FCC and in August won reinstatement of their laws that protect private ISPs from municipal competitors"
Competition at its finest, right, when the priority is to protect [i.e., give undeserved priority and undeserved advantage to] companies from municipal "competitors". Protecting companies by denying the people/communities to spend their own money to create their own services for their own benefit (which is basically, although indirectly, being done here). Dream come true, nicely done.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Why introduce a new level of overhead just to make money for middlemen?
That law is stupid, free market must include public services to avoid high oligopolístic prices
But why not make an LLC to provide those services or even make the users to join a cooperative that buys the service from the actual one or a LLC that buys the service from the actual one to sell to a cooperative?
How fair is it for a small company providing internet service to have to "compete" with government which can and usually does operate at a loss, provide service with little or no quality concerns and virtually no customer service concerns? Seems reasonable to me that the government should provide utilities to its citizens, but doesn't seem reasonable to me that some city gov be allowed to "compete" for non-citizens. That this is controversial is a sad commentary on the education of the Left. But then again, neither Left nor Right are much interested in reality.
as long as it is paid for