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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 20 2016, @11:11PM
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.)