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Raleigh Resolution Against Time Warner Monopoly Protection Act

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A resolution opposing H129/S87 from the city of Raleigh:

RESOLUTION NO. 2011 – 322

A RESOLUTION OF THE CITY OF RALEIGH URGING THE STATE TO RECOGNIZE THE ROLE OF MUNICIPALITIES IN THE DEPLOYMENT OF TECHNOLOGY SERVICES FOR THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF NORTH CAROLINA AND TO EXPRESS CONCERN ABOUT POTENTIAL LEGISLATION TO LIMIT LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISION OF BROADBAND SERVICE

Whereas, access to high capacity, high-speed, state-of-the-art broadband networks is essential for our state to compete in the global economy and to provide citizens access to advanced applications in medicine, public safety, energy management and education;

Whereas, the United States is rapidly losing ground to other countries in broadband subscriptions per capita and North Carolina is similarly losing ground to other states;

Whereas, contrary to that trend, the City of Raleigh has made significant strides in ensuring that businesses, citizens, and visitors have access to technology services, providing free WiFi service in the center city area;

Whereas, in March of 2010 the City of Raleigh was named America's Most Wired City by Forbes, ranking higher overall than any other U.S. city in three measures—broadband penetration, broadband access, and plentiful WiFi hot spots;

Whereas, the City of Raleigh's experience demonstrates the economic development benefits of investment in the deployment of advanced networks by public and private providers;

Whereas, Senate Bill 87 and House Bill 129, companion bills entitled Level Playing Field/Local Gov't Competition, were introduced in the 2011 Regular Session of the North Carolina General Assembly; and

Whereas, if enacted the proposed legislation would not have leveled the playing field but instead would have hindered local governments from providing needed communications services, especially advanced high-speed broadband, in underserved areas and imposed burdensome obligations on local governments that private broadband providers would not have to meet;

Whereas, if enacted the proposed legislation would have denied local governments the availability of federal grants under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to assist in providing affordable access to high capacity broadband service in unserved and underserved areas; and

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With New Hope, North Carolina Broadband Struggle Continues

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On Wednesday morning, March 22, the House Finance Committee will again consider H 129, a bill from Time Warner Cable to make it all but impossible for communities to build their own broadband networks. But now, as noted by Craig Settles, the momentum is shifting. Last week, advocates had a big victory when Representatives Faison and Warren successfully amended the bill (each with his own amendment) to make it less deleterious to communities. Unlike the sham voice vote in the Public Utility Committee, Chairman Setzer of the Finance Committee had a recorded vote, allowing citizens to hold their representatives accountable. After these amendments passed, the TWC lobbyist signaled for an aide. Shortly thereafter, the committee decided to table the matter until this week -- when TWC will undoubtedly try to remove or nullify those amendments. In the meantime, AT&T has announced bandwidth caps, yet another reason the state is foolish to pin its broadband future on cable and DSL companies. Compare AT&T's movement to less-broadband with Wilson Greenlight's recent dramatic price decreases in its ridiculously fast broadband network, causing at least one couple to move there! Greenlight is owned and operated by the public power company owned by the city.
Greenlight has signed up its first residential customers with the highest Internet speed available in Wilson. Vince and Linda Worthington, former Johnston County residents, moved to Wilson after finding out that they could have access to 40 Megabits per second Internet speeds at a lower cost than what they were previously paying. "We always wanted the 100Mbps service," she said.
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Community Network Map

Want to go full-screen? 

Use the filters to show different municipal networks. These filters are additive, so selecting more will display only the subsets of municipal networks with all of those characteristics. Hover over the "i" tooltip to learn more about the different filters below. Click on any community to learn more.

Communities invest in telecommunications networks for a variety of reasons - economic development, improving access to education and health care, price stabilization, etc. They range from massive networks offering multi-gigabit service to hundreds of thousands of households to small towns connecting a few local businesses. In the map above, networks that serve more than one community are connected by a web - there is no particular significance to the center point in the web, other than to serve as a common connection point.

This map tracks a variety of ways in which local governments have invested in wired telecommunications networks as well as state laws that discourage such approaches.

Our map includes 400 municipal networks serving more than 700 communities. More than 200 of those communities are served by a publicly owned network which blankets the entire city with fiber infrastructure (see last updated date in the map above).

We continue to expand this map with other forms of publicly owned networks, including Indigenously owned networks and telephone and electric cooperatives. Get updates by signing up for our one-email-per-week list announcing new stories and resources.

Media Contact: Sean Gonsalves, sgonsalves@ilsr.org Questions? See the FAQ.

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Asheville Opposes Rep Avila's Attempt to Enshrine Time Warner Cable Monopoly

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The continuing saga of H129/S87 in North Carolina has proved at least one thing, Time Warner Cable knows how to pull the puppet strings. The bill was written by Time Warner Cable and pretends to be about creating a level playing field while it effectively outlaws community networks (and some public safety networks) -- much to Time Warner Cable's financial benefits. It remains unclear whether Representative Avila, who is championing this TWC power grab, truly knows what she is doing or is simply ignorant and blindly trusts the TWC lobbyists actually running the show. After Legislators received a torrent of phone calls opposing TWC's bill, Rep Avila promised to negotiate with communities to find some middle ground and ensure the legislation at least grandfathered existing community networks. Instead, she turned the meetings over to TWC to run -- rather than negotiating, they set their terms. She has made multiple public claims about being reasonable but in private, she has made it clear that this is Time Warner Cable's bill. Communities are dead set against this bill, noting the many ways in which it creates unique barriers for their networks while giving a free pass to TWC. Hardly shocking as TWC wrote the bill and is calling the shots via Rep. Avila (whose own district opposes the bill). Now Asheville has passed a resolution against the bill [pdf], fearing its passage would derail their public safety network. The staff report explains why:
The stated purpose of the bills is to protect jobs and promote investment in North Carolina. The mechanism for protection is structured as restrictions on local government on engaging in what governing boards deem to be public-purpose communication and/or broadband projects.
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Rockingham County, NC, Passes Resolution Against Bill to Limit Community Networks

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Rockingham County has joined Raleigh in officially passing a resolution against legislation to cripple community networks in the state.

 

RESOLUTION
BY THE ROCKINGHAM COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
AGAINST SENATE BILL 87 and HOUSE BILL 129

WHEREAS, Senate Bill 87 and House Bill 129 have been introduced in the 2011-2012 Session of the General Assembly of North Carolina; and

WHEREAS, these bills do not provide a level playing field to cities, towns and counties, but greatly hinder local governments from providing needed communications services, especially advanced high-speed broadband services, in unserved and underserved areas; and

WHEREAS, these bills impose numerous obligations on cities and towns that private broadband companies do not have to meet; and

WHEREAS, private companies, despite having received favorable regulatory and tax treatment to enable broadband investment, have chosen to avoid the financial commitment necessary to provide top quality services to all residents and businesses; and

WHEREAS, while private companies declare top quality service is cost-prohibitive in our country, the United States continues to lose ground to other nations in broadband access, user cost and growth in number of users, falling behind the United Kingdom, Korea, France, Japan and Canada to name a few, and Japan has Internet access that is at least 500 times faster than what is considered high-speed in the United States and at less cost; and

WHEREAS, the bills would prohibit North Carolina cities and towns from using federal grant funds to 

deploy or operate locally-owned or operated broadband systems, thereby denying N.C. residents access to federal assistance available to the rest of the country and hindering employment opportunities; and

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Protect FCC Authority to Ensure an Open Internet

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Despite the FCC's lack of interest (or rather, Chairman G's lack of interest) in actually defending Network Neutrality and protecting the open Internet, we must defend the right of the FCC to ensure an Open Internet. Such is life... And right now a House amendment would deny funding to the FCC to implement net neutrality rules.

Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR), has authored Amendment 404 (aptly numbered, for us protocol geeks) to gut FCC authority to oversee companies like Comcast and AT&T. This goes above and beyond what even those carriers are asking for, though they no doubt hope it succeeds. For a quick primer on network neutrality, check out this infographic.

This amendment may be attached to the Continuing Resolution necessary to keep the government running -- a crucial resolution to pass. We have to get on the horn to ensure Representative vote against this resolution to ensure the FCC has the authority it needs to do its job (preventing AT&T, Comcast, et al. from becoming supreme gate keepers of the Internet). Many Republicans may be lost causes here due to party line discipline. However, a number of Democrats are leaning toward voting with Republicans on this issue, including one of Minnesota's: Representative Colin Peterson from the 7th District. If you are a constituent of these Representatives, make sure you contact them! Representative Peterson has previously voted in favor of network neutrality, so it is important to find out why he has changed his mind.

Network Neutrality had long been a bi-partisan issue with both Democrats and Republicans seeking to preserve the open Internet. But recently Republicans have been swayed by powerful interests that want big companies to decide how we can access the Internet.

 

These are key representatives that should be contacted. If you are a constituent or know people who are, make sure they call or email immediately!

Representative

District

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Natural Monopoly in North Carolina: The Need for Community Networks and Competition

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As the North Carolina Legislature considers HB129 and S87 to greatly limit community broadband networks (we analyzed the bill here), it is worth taking a step back to understand why companies like Time Warner Cable provide broadband that is unreliable and comparatively both slow and costly without having other companies come in to offer a better product. The problem is basic economics: the problem of natural monopoly. Ever wonder why you generally don't have a choice between two major operators like Comcast and Time Warner Cable? They have carved up the market due to the costs and difficulty of directly competing with one another. Some folks have a choice of cable companies -- RCN and Knology, for instance, have been successful overbuilders in a few regions (though they went through troubles far worse than most public networks that have been termed "failures"). But for the most part, overbuilding an incumbent cable company is all but impossible -- especially for a private sector company looking for a solid return on investment inside a few years. In the face of a new cable entrant, massive companies like TWC start lowering prices, offering cash or other enticements, and lock both residents and businesses into contracts to deny the entrant any subscribers. Companies like TWC can do this because they have lower costs (through volume discounts for gear, content, and even marketing synergies as well as because they long ago amortized the network construction costs) and can take losses in one community that are cross-subsidized by profits from non-competitive areas. New entrants, both private and public, have higher costs as well as a learning curve. 

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Opposition Builds to TWC Bill in NC - Private Companies Weigh In Against Bill

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A coalition of private companies, including Alcatel-Lucent, American Public Power Association, Atlantic-Engineering, the Fiber to the Home Council, Google, Intel, OnTrac, Telecommunications Industry Association, and Utilities Telecom Council, have released a letter opposing HB129/S87 in North Carolina. The bill would create considerable barriers to community broadband networks and public-private partnerships, effectively outlawing both given the restrictive language. We examined this bill here. This the text of the letter they released:

February 25, 2011
via email

Representative Thom Tillis
Speaker of the House
Room 2304
16 West Jones Street
Raleigh, NC 27601-1096

Senator Phil Berger
Senate President Pro Tempore
Room 2008
16 W. Jones Street Raleigh, NC 27601-2808

Dear Representative Tillis and Senator Berger:

We, the undersigned private-sector companies and trade associations, urge you to oppose H129/S87 (Level Playing Field/Local Competition bill) because it will harm both the public and private sectors, stifle economic growth, prevent the creation or retention of thousands of jobs, hamper work force development and diminish the quality of life in North Carolina. In particular, this bill will hurt the private sector in several ways: by curtailing public-private partnerships, stifling private companies that sell equipment and services to public broadband providers, and impairing educational and occupational opportunities that contribute to a skilled workforce from which businesses across the state will benefit.

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Continuing Push to Stop North Carolina Monopoly Protection Act

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As part of the effort to stop the bill that will codify Time Warner Cable's monopoly in North Carolina, we published a press release today (previous coverage of the bill here):
While the rest of the world is working to become more innovative and competitive, the North Carolina General Assembly is considering a bill that will stifle innovation, hurt job creation and slow economic development. The Bill, H129/S87 will effectively prevent any community from building a broadband network and impose onerous restrictions on existing networks, including Wilson’s Greenlight and Salisbury’s Fibrant. Greenlight and Fibrant are the most technologically advanced citywide networks in the state, comparative to the best available in the U.S. and international peers, according to a study released by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) in November, 2010. This bill will protect the aging networks of incumbent cable companies—furthering their effective monopolies—that have refused to invest in newer, faster technologies. “This bill is a job and competitiveness killer. I don’t know why North Carolina wants to protect old technology, but if they want to get on the information super highway in a horse and buggy—the world is going to pass them by,” said Christopher Mitchell, Director of ILSR’s Telecommunications as Commons Initiative. The bill says it is an act to “protect jobs,” a claim that puzzles Mitchell. “Community owned networks create jobs both directly and indirectly – and there is no evidence they have resulted in the elimination of any jobs.”
You can now Sign a petition showing your support for community networks in North Carolina - please make sure this link circulates among any contacts you have in NC!
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