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Virginia 'Broadband Deployment Act' Would Kill Municipal Broadband Deployment (arstechnica.com)
Virginia lawmakers are considering a bill called the "Virginia Broadband Deployment Act," but instead of resulting in more broadband deployment, the legislation would make it more difficult for municipalities to offer Internet service. From a report: The Virginia House of Delegates legislation proposed this week by Republican lawmaker Kathy Byron would prohibit municipal broadband deployments except in very limited circumstances. Among other things, a locality wouldn't be allowed to offer Internet service if an existing network already provides 10Mbps download and 1Mbps upload speeds to 90 percent of potential customers. That speed threshold is low enough that it can be met by old DSL lines in areas that haven't received more modern cable and fiber networks. Even if that condition is met, a city or town would have to jump through a few hoops before offering service. The municipality would have to pay for a "comprehensive broadband assessment," and then issue a request for proposals giving for-profit ISPs six months to submit a plan for broadband deployment. After receiving proposals from private ISPs, the local government would have to determine whether providing grants or subsidies to a private ISP would be more cost-effective than building a municipal broadband network.
First, this isn't a law yet. The Republicans have a majority in the statehouse, but the governor is a Democrat (though I haven't seen any word on how he intends to respond). That said, there's already a law on the books restricting Municipal broadband. Most of the built-up suburbs have at least two options between FiOS and Cable (mostly Comcast, but Cox has a few counties including Fairfax, the biggest DC suburban one). Currently the only part that has municipal broadband is Bristol, in the southwestern part of the state on the Tennessee border, where they have full FTTP. Unfortunately, it's not exactly a large city (population ~17k).
Overall the state isn't a bad place to live, though it has its crazy quirks, and some parts of it are very different from others. Most of the tech jobs are up near or in DC, and relate to the Federal Government in some way. The DC suburbs are pricy and traffic sucks (though not as bad as the Bay Area still). The weather usually isn't too bad, though people have no clue how to drive in snow. The food is pretty good, and you're well positioned between both the Northern and Southern regions of the country.
Improper Government is bad. Just that most modern governements are involved in way more than they should be (arresting people for serving food to the homeless??? WTF??)
My solution is much more simple. Government manages not just the Conduit, but the actual Fiber in it. Bring it all back to a COLO facility where the competition happens. The "cable" companies no longer control the cable, only the content. And since each customer can get the services they want, from the provider(s) they want, it is all open to anyone who want access to those customers. All they need is a feed from the COLO to whatever they are offering.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.