Comcast Tries To Derail Fort Collins Community Broadband (dslreports.com)

Karl Bode reports of Comcast's efforts to "derail Fort Collins community broadband": Colorado is one of more than twenty states where incumbent broadband ISPs have quite literally written and purchased state protectionist laws prohibiting towns and cities from getting into the broadband business, even in instances where the private sector has failed to deliver. But Colorado is unique in that town and cities in the state have been able to vote locally on whether to overturn this ISP-lobbying-for- law, SB 152. And guess what? They keep voting to exempt themselves from the law, usually overwhelmingly. Dozens of cities and towns continue to opt out of the restrictive state measure during local elections. More than 100 have done it so far, which should tell you plenty about how locals feel about their local broadband options. Fort Collins, Colorado will be the latest to try and table a petition on November 7 simply exploring the idea of opting out of this state provision and considering a city-run broadband network. But Motherboard highlights how incumbent ISPs like Comcast have already spent more than $200,000 to prevent this conversation from even happening. To be clear Fort Collins isn't certain to proceed with such a network, but incumbent ISPs are terrified they've even begun to have the conversation, and have been running ads like this one to try and derail it.

Comments

How about this?

[DontBeAMoran]

You paid $200K to not have any competition? Then you have to invest at least $400K into building/upgrading the infrastructure that you just prevented from happening. You have one year otherwise you forfeit your rights, you lose your $200K and you give everything built/upgraded so far to the competition you just prevented.

Re:america

[Quzak]

I identify as a Fortune 500 multi-billion dollar corporation. It is amazing.