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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
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday September 20 2016, @07:15PM
Digging for fiber is capital intensive, with long ROI, especially with small-fry costs.
Some shill working for one of the telcos would see his name used to sue, to prevent his town from investing into what's clearly a short-term loss.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bucc5062 on Tuesday September 20 2016, @07:27PM
I'm not sure I understand. In the summary, Green light had decided to make the investment into Pinetops to they were ready to lay out the Capital and did. What I was postulating was that a resident of Pinetops creates a private corporation (LLC) with the purpose of starting a privately owned ISP. They then approach greenlight with a proposal that asks Greenlight to invest in the local ISP. The local ISP then hires sub-contractors to run the fiber and provide the service to the homes. Amazingly enough, the money invested is about the same as what Greenlight would have to put out in capital. Just in another column.
If we are worried that the newly minted CEO would pull a grab and dash, a co-op is formed to run an ISP which again is not a municipality or utility.
Short of voting out the fuckers that keep blocking this stuff, a smart republican could do a good thing, make some change on the side and help a lot of people. Democrats would just be happy yo have the utility do the job, but then we're practical that way.
The more things change, the more they look the same
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Tuesday September 20 2016, @08:52PM
Why doesn't the municipality just form their own company then?
As far as I know, corporations (cities) are allowed to own other corporations.
(Score: 2) by unitron on Tuesday September 20 2016, @09:13PM
"Why doesn't the municipality just form their own company then?"
Wilson, NC, did that.
Then the cable companies bribed the state legislators to pass a law to keep any other NC municipalities from doing the same thing.
So Greenlight, in Wilson, can't serve Pinetops, and Pinetops can't start their own little Greenlight, but Time-Warner Cable can serve both communities out of the same local office and from the same headend if there's enough profit to make it worth their while, which means they get to cherry pick the parts of that service area they want and ignore the rest of it while preventing anyone else from serving it, except maybe the phone company over copper that was probably run the better part of 100 years ago.
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