The "Center for Public Integrity" has collected some examples of the robocalls, direct-mail brochures and newspapers ads that are being used by telcos and lobby groups to encourage people to vote against municipal broadband initiatives in their area.
They emphasise the "government takeover of telecommunications" and "risking taxpayers money" aspects of these proposed municipal networks. I didn't see any mention of the far greater risk, which is that these networks might work out exactly as intended and therefore take revenue away from the companies who are sponsoring these "no" campaigns. But then again, the examples posted are not the complete brochures, so I can't say for certain this wasn't mentioned.
Does anyone have real life experience with municipal broadband that they can share? Should we be thanking these companies for spending their hard-earned money warning us of the dangers?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 02 2014, @08:18AM
Yes. Municipal broadband in Chicago is censored. No porn, and the last time I tried to visit a perfectly normal site with "naked" in the title, that was censored too.
There isn't much municipal broadband in Chicago because the city is large. There's free public Wi-Fi in the downtown area and at public libraries.
But see here, SoylentNews is censored too. On-topic discussion about censorship of municipal broadband is modded down.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday September 02 2014, @01:31PM
Bah, as long as porn is not censored, there's still a chance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0