S1209 exempts Wilson; goes to the full Senate today

The Senate Finance Committee made some pretty big changes to Senate Bill 1209 yesterday. It is being heard in the Senate today. You can listen to the discussion here. Just click on Senate Chamber. Wilson was fully exempt from the bill. That means the 28-million dollar investment our community made three years ago wasn’t made [...]

Private industry says latest monopoly-protection bill is bad for economy, NC

Google, Alcatel-Lucent, Intel and other industry representatives are asking NC lawmakers not to pass new restrictions on municipal broadband and to abandon Senate Bill 1209. They understand that city or county owned broadband is a good thing for business, not a bad thing as suggested by some of the cable and telecom giants. The full [...]

Winston Salem Journal: Telecoms can’t expect people to keep waiting

The Winston Salem Journal did an excellent job covering the municipal broadband issue this week. The writers understood that the people of NC shouldn’t have to wait around for cable and telecom companies to improve their systems. US broadband speeds simply haven’t kept up with many countries because the copper cable and telephone wires are [...]

Draft of this year’s NC anti-municipal broadband bill (4th attempt by the cable company)

Here’s the draft of Senator Hoyle’s (D-Gaston) broadband bill for 2010. It’s only a few paragraphs: doesn’t take long to read, but its effects would be substantial. Essentially, the State government would force local cities and towns to hold an election before borrowing money to build a community-owned broadband network. This will slow down broadband [...]

Editorial: Moratorium protects cable monopoly at communities’ expense

This Wednesday, May 5th, Senator David Hoyle (D-Gaston) will propose a moratorium on municipal broadband in NC. The Salisbury Post recently published this editorial about it. The moratorium, to be presented in the NC Revenue Laws Committee goes hand in hand with the cable company’s repeated attempts to change the law to protect its monopoly. [...]

Moratorium against new community broadband to be pushed May 5th

Sen. David Hoyle of Gaston County said Wednesday that he’d like to see a moratorium on new community broadband in NC. He’ll bring it up again at a committee meeting on May 5th. Senator Daniel Clodfelter mentioned that several other legislators felt the issue was important enough to warrant attention. Here’s a great article Jay [...]

Another place where community broadband is working

The Economist did a great story recently about  our friends in Bristol, Virginia. Bristol, like Wilson, ran its first fiber a few years ago to connect City facilities, then made it available to everyone after people in town asked for it. In fact, when Wilson was building its fiber ring several years ago, several local [...]

NC Legislature tackling money issues; still no decision on broadband

Hasn’t been much to report lately in our battle with the monopoly bills. Long story short, our state’s elected leaders have had their hands full this summer and, apparently, neither bill has been worthy of a big push lately. That said, the lobbyists from the cable company live in those buildings and have been pretty [...]

Video of the House Vote

Here’s a 29-minute unedited video of the vote to send HB 1252 to a study committee. We’re told the cable company is lobbying to hand-pick a more friendly committee instead.