Georgia's absurd anti-community broadband bill is of course only the latest in a decade long effort by incumbent ISPs to ban communities from wiring themselves -- even if the local operator refuses to. The Wall Street Journal notes that with the recent passage of similar rules in North and South Carolina, 19 states now have laws in place -- all of them written by incumbent ISPs -- either banning or greatly hindering community broadband improvement efforts. The justifications for these rules remain the same, AT&T and Time Warner Cable informing the Journal that they "just want a level playing field":Except AT&T's bills ban towns and cities from deploying broadband whether or not there's a local company there providing service. In Georgia, for example, AT&T spent the last few months trying to ban any town or city from wiring itself if just one person in a zip code has access to a 3 Mbps connection (only just upgraded in bill language from 1.5 Mbps). Verizon stopped lobbying for these laws long ago, given they're no longer interested in these markets. AT&T's also slowly backing out of the DSL business, suggesting they're just being maliciously schizophrenic for their own amusement.

Meanwhile, anybody who believes these uncompetitive incumbents have the slightest interest in a level playing field is either willfully delusional or horribly misinformed. These bills are miserable pieces of protectionist drivel that should by now be seeing massive bi-partisan opposition, since they involve large monopolies eroding local rights -- simply so they can jack up prices and continue failing when it comes to providing next-generation connectivity.

It's incredibly refreshing to know that occasionally bi-partisan common sense does prevail, like in Georgia late last night when AT&T, Windstream and CenturyLink's effort was shot down 70-94 thanks to a coalition of Republicans and Democrats. The bill had received national attention, with Google and Alcatel Lucent highlighting that such community broadband efforts wouldn't need to exist if local incumbents were providing the kind of quality services consumers want.