Cable Giants Try to Limit Cities' Internet Service
By Neal Colgrass, Newser Staff
Posted Aug 30, 2014
(Newser) – Municipalities, take note: US Telecom, a group
representing cable giants like Time Warner and Comcast is pressing US officials
to stop two cities from expanding high-speed Internet services, the Guardian reports.
Those cities—Chattanooga, TN,
and Wilson, NC—are
already providing unusually fast 1GB-per-second service to residents. Chattanooga's
broadband helped trigger a tech boom, and Wilson's
reached people who were complaining about the quality and cost of Time Warner
service. Now each city wants to expand service into a wider area, the Wall Street Journal reports.
US Telecom's lobbyists are urging the FCC not to let cities
work around laws designed to protect private broadband companies (20 states
have such laws, the Verge notes).
http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/29/6084171/cable-companies-file-to-stop-municipal-broadband-expansion
US Telecom is also arguing in a blog (http://www.ustelecom.org/blog/fcc-has-no-standing-state-broadband-laws)
that public broadband has "a mixed record, with numerous examples of
failures"—and it's true that a group of Utah towns had to sell its service
to Google for $1 after failing to make enough money. So, is municipal broadband
anti-competitive? Cable companies say subsidies give cities an unfair leg up,
while cities argue that they are improving competition in their areas. (On the
lighter side, read about the Comcast "call
from hell.")
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