First, let me say thanks to all of you who have offered to help. Your response is overwhelming and we really, truly appreciate it.
If you live in NC, I’ve posted the contact information for the Legislators who will see the bill next, the NC House Public Utilities Commitee. This group did not sponsor the bill. It was sent to them yesterday by the Science & Technology Committee.
To you good people who have made contact from all over the globe, know that your encouragement means more than you realize. Several cities/towns in NC have visited Wilson because they’re considering their own systems, but are afraid to speak up because there’s a huge target on your back when you’re considering this service. Thank you for the encouragement.
One more thing, several people have mentioned their Congressional Representatives. While there is a current debate on national broadband policy, HB 1252 is specifically for cities in North Carolina. Thanks, again.
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Save NC Broadband.com 
I have a hard time getting worked up over something like this. In parts of my county, Danbury, we don’t have anything at all. You guys are out there competing against these incumbents because the incumbents refused to kick up the speed of existing connections, and that’s all well and fine and I absolutely support that (very strongly support that), but what do I care?
The central exchange that my home is using located in Danbury (Embarq) only offers 18% of its customers DSL, basically the people that are close enough to the exchange itself. Anyone served by the exchange but further than the DSL distance limit is out of luck, and probably will be forever.
It’s really quite absurd, my home is within two miles of 4-5 Embarq equipment boxes at a small installation that has *fiber* run to it, but they won’t put a DSLAM out there.
Time Warner is expanding in North Carolina but they won’t ever run cable down this road (despite the fact that it has a high school on it), it doesn’t meet their “15 homes per mile” rule of thumb and given that this is a rural area, it probably never will.
On the one hand we’re both suffering from the same problem, but fighting this legislation only hurts you guys, and defeating it only benefits you.
I would care a lot more about efforts to defeat this kind of legislation if North Carolina would go to the front of the line and start directly funding community broadband programs like yours all over the state.
Good luck with your fight against this legislation, and all. I hope that Perdue vetos it if it does pass. elect a Democrat for?
we are moving to danbury in the next few weeks, and had heard that embarq was adding more DSL abilities via the phone lines… do you know if that is true or am i going to be stuck with hughsnet?
Lisa, that’s a few hours from here, but one of our favorite vacation spots. I don’t know the answer to your question, but I do know there’s some great hiking up that way. Good luck.
I recently sent an email to Rep Tillis attempting to educate him to just how much negative press Time Warner has received nationally over the past month. A quick google news search for Time Warner Broadband turns up negative press from the LA Times to ConsumerAffairs to ArsTechnica, to eWeek. Our representatives need to know more about with whom they are getting into bed, and just how nasty this is going to look to their constituents.
Nobody likes to stand next to a company in ill repute. Make sure your representative knows just how bad this smells. Argue that they need to kill this thing in committee.
Count me in on wanting to help out. I wrote to my representative, Mickey Michaux, and also sent an email to all of the committee members urging them to reject the bill.