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Blackburn Moves to Protect State Protectionist Broadband Bills
by Karl Bode
Wednesday Jul 16 2014 16:46 EDT

New FCC boss Tom Wheeler has now stated several times he'd like to take aim at incumbent-ISP state laws that ban or prohibit towns and cities from deploying their own broadband. To stop this, Rep. Marsha Blackburn is pushing H.R. 5016, a bill that attempts to block FCC funding for such an effort because the FCC "should not be allowed to trump states rights and tell them how to spend their money."

That's pretty ironic, given the FCC is only responding to bills written and purchased by giant corporations that trump state rights and tell local citizens how they can spend their money.

The EFF has more detail, noting how Bluckburn (read: Comcast and the other incumbent ISPs in the state) were pushing hard to get the bill passed using the net neutrality debate as political cover. They also point out how Blackburn's willfully oblivious to the success of municipal broadband in her home state, a municipal broadband project is offering services regional incumbents refuse to:
quote:
Consider Chattanooga, Tennessee, a city that has better broadband than San Francisco. Chattanooga is home to one of the nation’s least expensive, most robust municipally owned broadband networks. There, users have access to a gigabit (1,000 megabits) per second Internet connection. That’s far ahead of the average US connection speed, which typically clocks in at 9.8 megabits per second.
The underlying argument from Blackburn and friends continues to be that municipal broadband is the devil -- but letting local massive corporations write state telecom laws (laws that often completely eliminate your right to choose for yourself what your town does or doesn't do, while also resulting in less competition, higher prices, and worse customer service) is perfectly ok.

tags: legal · competition · business · municipal · consumers

Most recommended from 29 comments



karlmarx
join:2006-09-18
Moscow, ID

karlmarx

Member

2014-Jul-16 5:25 pm

Whose thinking about the needs of the business?

Every time you have those socialist cities setting up services on the TAXPAYERS back, you are taking away from the executives of the big companies. Sure, they taxpayers get better services, faster speeds, no caps (sorry data thresholds), but they are taking away money from the job creators (and the coke and hookers from the fat cats). Why doesn't everyone see that the only way the US will get better broadband is if we stop the feds from interfering (well, except for birth control, because we all see our local megacorps in chuch every sunday). The only solution of course is to let comcast and AT&T provide a substandard service at an inflated price. Once we put an end to these evil marxist regimes, everything will be much better for everyone. I for one would HATE to see any other cities have a profitable broadband service, which is DECIMATING the incumbents (hint: Check out what comcast advertises in Chattanooga (Comcast). They offer FOUR (4) simultaneous HD recordings, AND, AND, the MOST LIVE SPORTS! Why anyone would choose a non data-threshold, 1gb/sec internet connection for $69.99 over comcast offering a 6mb/sec connection for just 59.99 (thus SAVING you $10.00 a MONTH) is just insane. So lets defang the FCC, ditch net neutrality, because comcast loves you (so much, they just won't let you cancel)
· actions · 2014-Jul-16 5:25 pm ·

mixdup
join:2003-06-28
Atlanta, GA

mixdup

Member

2014-Jul-16 4:56 pm

Wait, what?

I don't get it. Her argument is that the FCC shouldn't be able to tell states how to spend their money. But that's not what the FCC is doing. States are telling cities how to spend their money, and the FCC is protecting cities' rights.

Try not to be so transparent next time, Marsha.
· actions · 2014-Jul-16 4:56 pm ·