CenturyLink: How Dare Cities Challenge The Laws We Paid For Wednesday Jul 30 2014 18:48 EDT CenturyLink, formerly Qwest, has spent much of its life suing community broadband efforts that might spur the company to improve its service offerings. They've also written (via draft legislation) and paid-to-pass legislation in numerous states that restrict or outright ban a community from deploying its own broadband infrastructure -- even in cases when CenturyLink couldn't be bothered to. With cities like Wilson, North Carolina and Chattanooga, Tennesee now pushing the FCC to void bills that were written by CenturyLink lawyers and exist solely to protect CenturyLink revenues (at the cost of local citizen rights), CenturyLink is handing out lectures on responsible ethics. According to CenturyLink, Wilson really isn't playing fair: quote: "CenturyLink currently is able to serve 96% of the homes in our North Carolina service area with high-speed Internet. We feel that with the passage of HB129, the North Carolina General Assembly has outlined a clear pathway for cities to build municipal networks with specific consumer protections. This law puts the decision of whether to incur debt into the hands of the citizens, and is similar to the ways that municipalities allow the citizens to decide whether to build schools or improve roads. The City of Wilson is simply trying to bypass their citizens, governor, legislature, and state policy."
Of course in typical lawyer and lobbyist "up is down" fashion, CenturyLink insists a bill they paid for that strips away local rights -- somehow puts rights back into the hands of the locals. Apparently, CenturyLink can bribe throw money via SuperPAC at public officials to pass laws CenturyLink wrote, but a city urging the FCC to block bills that hinder the FCC's mission to ensure broadband is deployed "in a reasonable timely basis" is just going way too far. |
2 recommendations |
Nazi | |
2 recommendations |
Upgrade your Fu**ing networkUpgrade your Fu**ing network. Lets see cox 100Mbps vs Centurylink 10 Mbps. Yeah. | |
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