Paper: Muni Broadband Bill Quietly Tucked Into Another Bill

Okay, I know there’s a lot to keep up with in this ongoing battle, but there’s a new development you need to know about. According to the Greensboro News and Record’s Mark Binker, the municipal broadband moratorium from senate bill 1209 has been moved to another bill, house bill 1840; apparently to get around a [...]

NC’s Broadband Fight Continues Tomorrow (Apr. 21)

Wilson’s municipal broadband operation is right on target. In spite of the difficult economy of the past two years, sign-ups are great. People are excited about Greenlight, and they’re showing their support by signing up. The biggest obstacle, as I see it, is the constant stream of legislative attempts to limit cities and towns from [...]

Monopoly protection bill comes up again this Wednesday (Apr. 21)

Just when you think the anti-municipal broadband bills have finally faded away, another one comes along. Long story short, the bills (which have been reconstituted several times since they were born in 2007) sandbag cities and towns in NC and effectively kill any future municipal broadband deployment. They were created in partnership with the cable [...]

Great Facebook fan page available for community broadband

As countless cities and towns wait to see who will get the Google fiber gift, more communities are realizing that they may need to pursue fiber on their own. Wilson asked the private service providers to build a fiber network and they said no, so we built it ourselves. Today, we have 100M synchronous connections [...]

Broadband monopoly bill up for a vote tomorrow (5/6)

The bill that would force you to wait on the cable/phone supplier for better broadband speeds is up for a vote tomorrow morning (Wed., May 6) in the NC House Public Utilities Committee in room 1228 of the Legislative building on Jones St. HB 1252 would prevent any NC city/county/town from providing broadband services to [...]