Slashdot Mirror
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.
If you can't even do as well as the government, you don't deserve to be in business.
Just another case of Gov't providing Corporate Protectionism at the expense of the People Anyone that still thinks that "People" are the Citizens Gov't serves are either delusional or hopelessly naive The real Citizens of the US are the Corporate Personhood and the Wealthy Elite
I think this state law goes a bit overboard. That I can think of, municipal fiber is only a problem in two types of cases. Sometimes, city council just isn't very good at running an ISP - they are mostly car dealers, real estate agents, and insurance agents, not networking experts. So they waste taxpayer money with their toy ISP. The local voters can probably handle that most of the time.
Many of us probably recall Google announced they'd build out Google fiber only in cities where the local government didn't get in the way too much, dragging out permit processes for years, demanding kickbacks, etc. That reminds us that cities can and sometimes do make it very difficult, time consuming, and expensive for ISPs to offer improved services. Suppose you're councilman Jones. Two years ago, you proposed spending $50 million of taxpayer money building Muninet, run by the city. You get Muninet operational, a bit over budget, but it's providing 25 Mbps for $35. You and the rest of the city council aren't experienced at running an ISP, so sometimes there are glitches, but it should recover the $50 million investment over the next 12 years. You've taken some heat from the local newspaper for increasing taxes to pay for mediocre service, but you'll probably manage to get re-elected - you can spin it as a reasonably successful project, in it's first two years.
Now Google comes knocking, wanting to offer gigabit for $70. That makes your Muninet 25 Mbps look like utter shit. If Google is allowed to offer gigabit, nobody will pay for Muninet service anymore and your record will show taxpayers (voters) were left holding the bag for the $50 million construction cost. Are you going to approve Google fiber ( the death of Muninet) or are you going to do everything you can to keep gigabit at bay, protecting your Muninet project?
When the politicians who are responsible regulating / approving services are also running a competing service, they have a conflict of interest. That does need to be addressed somehow, but I don't think it means tax payer ISPs need to be banned.
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.