Re: The growth of municipal broadband networks

["Jeffrey S. Young" <young () jsyoung net>]

On 27/03/2011, at 6:35 PM, "Michael Painter" <tvhawaii () shaka com> wrote:

> Owen DeLong wrote:
> > On Mar 26, 2011, at 11:36 PM, Jay Ashworth wrote:
> > > ----- Original Message -----
> > > > From: "Owen DeLong" <owen () delong com>
> > > > As such, I'm sure that such a move would be vocally opposed by
> > > > the current owners of the LMI who enjoy leveraging it to extort
> > > > monopolistic pricing from substandard services.
> > > As I noted, yes, that's Verizontal, and they have apparently succeeded
> > > in lobbying to have it made *illegal* in several states.  I don't have
> > > citations to hand, but there are a couple sites that track muni fiber;
> > > I can find some.
> > > Cheers,
> > > -- jra
> > Laws can be changed if we can get enough momentum behind
> > doing the right thing.
> > Owen
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

While I agree that laws can and should be changed and I agree that the
USA's telco privatization scheme no longer fits the pace of technology, 
those who believe have a long way toward momentum.  Those of us who 
believe in a muni or a national broadband infrastructure are opposed by a 
mountain of money (to be made) and an army of lawyers.  For instance, 
when this army couldn't hope to have muni networking outlawed on a 
national basis they turned to each state legislature.  They're ticking off the 
states one by one:

http://www.cybertelecom.org/broadband/muni.htm

jy