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posted by martyb on Tuesday September 20 2016, @05:57PM   Printer-friendly
from the mama-don't-allow-no-competition-'round-here dept.

TechDirt reports

Wilson, North Carolina's Greenlight [publicly-owned ISP], has had to disconnect one neighboring town or face violating state law. With state leaders tone deaf to the problem of letting incumbent ISPs write such laws, and the FCC flummoxed [by a federal court] in its attempt to help, about 200 home Internet customers in [the town of] Pinetops will thus lose access to gigabit broadband service as of October 28

[...] Greenlight's fiber network provides speeds of 40Mbps to 1Gbps at prices ranging from $40 to $100 a month, service that's unheard of from any of the regional incumbent providers (AT&T, CenturyLink, Time Warner Cable) that lobbied for the protectionist law. Previously, the community of Pinetops only had access to sluggish DSL Service from CenturyLink.

Related:
Muni ISP forced to shut off fiber-to-the-home Internet after court ruling (Ars Technica)

Previous: Appeals Court Rules the FCC Cannot Override State Laws Banning Municipal ISPs


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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 20 2016, @06:47PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 20 2016, @06:47PM (#404407)

    I was hoping some of our more steadfast republican leaning membership is able to provide convincing discussion as to why the outcome of this is good for people. It is clearly good for the cable business, but I dunno about how the little person is effectively assisted by being released from the tyranny of government municpal internet connectivity providing a service otherwise unavailable via the invisible hand.

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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by tibman on Tuesday September 20 2016, @07:44PM

    by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday September 20 2016, @07:44PM (#404433)

    I don't think this is good for the people but just skimming the article the reason is pretty good. A state passed a law. The FCC shouldn't be able to override that law (unless it affects people outside that state maybe). The people should get that law fixed and everything would get better. The FCC doesn't need to even be involved in that.

    So the party line division is over small government vs big government. Can locals pass laws for themselves or not? If the government wants to they could pass a national law that then restricts what states could do. But using the FCC to overturn state laws (that are legal) doesn't seem like the legally correct thing. Even if in this case it is the morally correct thing. That stupid state law never should have been passed.

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    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 20 2016, @08:31PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 20 2016, @08:31PM (#404464)

      That is the best reply I could have asked for.

      I think the issue, then, is that the people with the money are able to afford to lobby their interests more effectively than the people that just want to buy service.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 20 2016, @11:11PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 20 2016, @11:11PM (#404543)

        Why should the FCC or FAA have any rights to airspace/waves within a state? Or the federal government with agriculture commerce inside the state?

        I will note there is case law stating that both are true. If so, then why does the FCC not have jursidiction in this particular case?

        I personally do agree with the local government management and having state agencies handle everything that doesn't cross state lines, but that is not the way the Union has reacted for almost 150 years, and perhaps hasn't acted since its foundation (although obviously the enforcement was much more lax in the early days.)

    • (Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Wednesday September 21 2016, @06:29AM

      by NotSanguine (285) <NotSanguineNO@SPAMSoylentNews.Org> on Wednesday September 21 2016, @06:29AM (#404679) Homepage Journal

      So the party line division is over small government vs big government. Can locals pass laws for themselves or not? If the government wants to they could pass a national law that then restricts what states could do. But using the FCC to overturn state laws (that are legal) doesn't seem like the legally correct thing. Even if in this case it is the morally correct thing. That stupid state law never should have been passed.

      And if the state law is a result of the corrupting influence of cartelists/monopolists on state legislatures, quis custodiet ipsos custodes [wikipedia.org]?

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