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Google Politely Asks Georgia to Not be a Broadband Buffoon
Urges Politician to Hang Up on HB 282

As I noted last month, AT&T and Windstream have lobbied Georgia lawmakers to pass a bill (HB 282) that would prohibit a town or city from deploying their own broadband if anyone in a single census tract has a 1.5 Mbps connection. This lobbying comes as AT&T moves to disconnect DSL lines and Windstream ceases network upgrades due to a lack of competition, meaning that these companies won't serve you -- but don't want you to serve yourself, either.

While these kinds of monopoly protectionism bills are unfortunately very common, the rabid stupidity of this particular piece of legislation has been drawing a little extra national attention. As a result, Google, Alcatel Lucent, and several other organizations and companies have fired off a letter to Georgia lawmakers quite politely asking them to stop being buffoons for hire. From the letter:
quote:
Consistent with these expressions of national unity, public entities in Georgia and across America are ready, willing, and able to do their share to bring affordable high-capacity broadband connectivity to all Americans. Enactment of direct or effective barriers to public broadband initiatives, including HB 282, would be counterproductive to the achievement of these goals. HB 282 is also inconsistent with America’s National Broadband Plan, which calls on States to remove existing barriers to community broadband initiatives and to refrain from enacting new ones.
HB 282 was proposed by Representative Mark Hamilton, who can be (politely) e-mailed here.