Time Warner pushes anti-municipality bill through NC State House.

[Callie Del Noire]

http://fibertothewhatever.com/wp/news/north-carolina-lawmakers-finalize-anti-municipal-broadband-bill

Basically Time Warner is trying to keep cities they IGNORE from setting up their own Network backbone. They've harried the city of Wilson, NC repeatly over this. Pulling them into court to have ISP/Network info they themselves refuse to disclose put out as public record.

Basically, rather than upgrading/expanding their systems into smaller towns, they want to be the only choice for access in as many areas as they can.

[Yorubi]

Come on I'm totally sure that its due to the freedoms america tries to offer and totally not because the politicians were paid off to do it. Come on, a corrupt state government? Please, there is no such thing as corruption.

[Callie Del Noire]

Okay, TWC has changed the coverage definition of broadband to this: if SOMEONE in your census region has ANY BROADBAND (not the 4mbps minims as defined by the FCC but as low as 700 kbps) that region has coverage. IE EVERYONE has 'access' to broadband. Meanwhile something like 53% of the state doesn't have it.

But, going by their claim, there is no need for a municipality to put it insincere they (TWC) have proven the state has been fully covered.

[Callie Del Noire]

And the fun goes on. The Bill is at this moment sitting on the Governor's desk TODAY. Governor 'Bev' Perdue, who is only a little less bent than her predecessor and LIVES for decision by the polls and 'What is best for me'.

I know it doesn't seem like a LOT but there are a LOT of rural areas that don't have broadband yet and this is the first step is cutting the 'off the beaten path' folks out of options since folks like Time Warner won't be going out to them.

The reason that the big broadband folks are doing this is because if the smaller cities and rural co-ops can show that they can do more for less, some of the bigger cities/counties might be tempted to do it. And while they don't care about a rural co-op making a thousand or so folks happy, they sure as hell don't want a city like Charlotte or Raleigh getting into the broadband market.

Not to mention even bigger cities like New York or such.

[Xajow]

And people wonder why I think letting government pass such regulations is a bad idea.

[Oniya]

Couldn't this be challenged under anti-monopoly laws?  It seems to me that this is the very definition of preventing competition.

[Xajow]

Governments don't usually challenge monopolies they help create.

[Callie Del Noire]

Governments don't usually challenge monopolies they help create.

Or better put, paid off politicians stay bought. Gov. Purdue in an excellent moment decided to neither sign or veto it.  So it goes into effect till she can figure out the polls (or Time Warner) tells her what to do.