{"id":102,"date":"2013-02-18T10:22:53","date_gmt":"2013-02-18T15:22:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/02\/national-attention-on-ga-hb-282-against-muni-broadband-needs-ga-leg-to-vote-it-down.html"},"modified":"2013-02-18T10:22:53","modified_gmt":"2013-02-18T15:22:53","slug":"national-attention-on-ga-hb-282-against-muni-broadband-needs-ga-leg-to-vote-it-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/02\/national-attention-on-ga-hb-282-against-muni-broadband-needs-ga-leg-to-vote-it-down.html","title":{"rendered":"National attention on GA HB 282 against muni broadband: needs GA leg. to vote it down"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nAnother bad idea from ALEC already passed in SC and NC and is now in the GA
\nlegislature, getting coverage in several national technical
\nand political blogs:
\n
\nHB 282<\/a>, which would effectively forbid
\nmunicipal broadband if any commercial carrier offers 1.5Mbps.
\nIt's up for a hearing this week: time to call your state rep.\n<\/p>\n

\nTimothy B. Lee wrote for ArsTechnica 14 Feb 2013,
\n
\nBill would ban muni broadband if one home in census tract gets 1.5Mbps:
\nApproach could leave some Georgia residents without a viable broadband option.<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\n

\n
\n<\/a>
\nIncumbent broadband providers are pushing legislation that would
\nrestrict Georgia towns from building municipal broadband networks.
\nUnder the proposal, if a single home in a census tract has Internet
\naccess at speeds of 1.5Mbps or above, the town would be prohibited
\nfrom offering broadband service to anyone in that tract.\n<\/p>\n

\nState-level restrictions on municipal broadband networks are\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

\nnot a
\nnew idea. Last year the South Carolina legislature passed a similar
\nproposal with the support of AT&T. North Carolina passed similar
\nlegislation in 2011. The idea has been shot down in Indiana and a
\nnumber of other states.\n<\/p>\n

\nMunicipal broadband opponents tried and failed to ban towns from
\nbuilding broadband networks in Georgia last year. But their case
\nwasn't helped when AT&T's CEO said in a conference call: "We're
\nlooking at rural America and asking, what's the broadband solution?
\nWe don't have one right now."\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nHey, AT&T: you can't even keep 3Mbps DSL working!
\nBut Verizon has 4G LTE that does
\nabout 11Mbps down
\nand 7Mbps up in Lowndes County.<\/a>
\nYou supposedly have 4G LTE nationwide, too, AT&T, so
\nstop the disingeneousness, please.
\nYou know how to do rural broadband: wirelessly.
\nBut let’s hear what arguments you have not to do it:\n<\/p>\n

\n

\nThe argument against municipal broadband networks is
\nstraightforward: in a free-market economy, private companies, not
\nthe government, should build broadband networks. That argument makes
\nsense in areas with healthy broadband competition. There's no reason
\nfor the government to get involved if the private sector is already
\ngetting the job done.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nWe have almost no areas in this country with healthy Internet
\naccess competition: we have mostly the telco or the cableco,
\naka the duopoly.
\nThat's why the U.S. has fallen from near the top in broadband
\nspeeds and uptake to hardly high enough to count as a developed
\ncountry, and most anything qualifying as real broadband costs
\nso much many people can't afford it.
\nMeanwhile,
\n
\nin Japan, Korea, Latvia, Finland, Moldova, Sweden, France, and Netherlands,<\/a>
\nyou can get 9 to 100 Mbps for around $30\/month.
\nFor sheer speed, Korea, France, Sweden, Finland, and Japan
\nall have way faster Internet access speeds than the U.S.,
\nand
\n
\nin the U.S. over 100 million people have no Internet access at all.<\/a>
\nThat's a serious problem for finding a job, turning in homework,
\nor getting informed about local or state or national politics.
\nAs Susan Crawford puts it, we've become
\n
\na captive audience.<\/a>
\nThe problem is so bad that Masayoshi Son's Softbank
\n
\njust bought a controling share in Sprint<\/a> to do something about it.\n<\/p>\n

\nIf a local government wants to do something about this by starting
\nfast local Internnet access, so far in Georgia there's no law against it.
\nThat's what ALEC wants to change.\n<\/p>\n

\nALEC
\n
\nbrags about disliking municipal broadband:<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\n

\n
\n<\/a>
\nThere is no question that broadband will become as ubiquitous as the
\ntraditional household utilities.\n<\/p>\n

\nBut does it deserve the same classification as water & sewer,
\nroadways, or school systems, in being provided by the government?\n<\/p>\n

\nA growing number of municipalities are answering \u201cyes\u201d
\nby building their own networks and offering broadband services to
\ntheir citizens. ALEC disagrees with their answer due to the negative
\nimpacts it has on free markets and limited government. In addition,
\nsuch projects could erode consumer choice by making markets less
\nattractive to competition because of the government's expanded role
\nas a service provider.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nThere is no real market in fast Internet access.
\nAnd adding a law to prevent local governments from providing
\nInternet service isn't limited government.\n<\/p>\n

\nBack to the ArsTechnical article:\n<\/p>\n

\n

\nBanning muni fiber only in areas that already have some service is
\nless draconian than banning municipal networks state-wide, but it
\ncould still leave residents of certain areas stranded without
\nservice. The threshold the bill sets as the minimum acceptable
\nbroadband speed, 1.5Mbps, is even lower than the 4Mbps level the FCC
\ndefines as the minimum broadband speed. And obviously, the fact that
\nsome people in a census tract have service doesn't mean that
\neveryone does.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nUsing census tracts is a slight variation on the old trick of
\nsaying that if one ZIP code has DSL that counts for the whole ZIP code.\n<\/p>\n

\n

\nMoreover, limiting which parts of town a municipal fiber network can
\nserve might make it impossible for that town to cost-effectively
\nreach under-served sections with broadband service. It's often more
\ncost-effective to deploy fiber to an entire town than to deploy
\nfiber selectively to only certain parts of town. The neighborhoods
\nbeing served by an incumbent are likely to be the wealthiest and
\ndensest parts of town. Banning towns from deploying fiber to those
\nparts of town may make it impossible to cover the fixed costs of a
\nmunicipal fiber project.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nFiber is a popular choice (see
\nChattanooga<\/a>), but instead
\nmaybe provide city- or county- or MSA-wide
\n4G LTE service.\n<\/p>\n

\nFortunately, there is
\n
\nresistance from rural towns.<\/a>
\nI hear even Valdosta is fighting this one in the legislature.\n<\/p>\n

\nWhich is good, because it's up for a hearing
\n
\nthis week; maybe today.<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\nAs Brian Wallace wrote for the Georgia Municipal Association (GMA) 12 February 2013,
\n
\nA Narrow Minded Approach to Broadband<\/a>,\n<\/p>\n

\nAdel is a perfect example of local leaders taking action to meet the needs of their community. And why should the state get into the business of limiting that?\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\nSee also
\n
\nthis NBC TV report on Thomasville.<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\nThomasville, where I hear a couple of companies moved their IT operations
\nfrom Valdosta because they could get broadband in Thomasville.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe
\n
\nAssociation of County Commissioners of Georgia (ACCG)<\/a>,
\nwhile it has
\n
\ntaken an interest in broadband in the past<\/a>,
\nappears to have no position yet on HB 282,
\nand I've heard nothing about the Lowndes County government
\ntaking a position.\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nAmy Henderson of GMA summed it up<\/a>:\n<\/p>\n

\nBroadband is economic development.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n-jsq<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another bad idea from ALEC already passed in SC and NC and is now in the GA legislature, getting coverage in several national technical and political blogs: HB 282, which would effectively forbid municipal broadband if any commercial carrier offers 1.5Mbps. It's up for a hearing this week: time to call your state rep. Timothy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[97,140,40,14,15,8,2,132,20,88,21,22,3,54],"tags":[8786,8736,8744,506,8717,28,8704,8705,8701,8785,8699,591,8741,8702,8710,12,7,8734,8711,8712,590,8700,6,8726],"class_list":["post-102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-alec","category-community","category-economy","category-education","category-georgia","category-government","category-internet-access-speed","category-law","category-lowndes-county-commission","category-planning","category-politics","category-transparency","category-valdosta-city-council","tag-accg","tag-activism","tag-alec","tag-broadband","tag-community","tag-cost","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-georgia","tag-gma","tag-government","tag-hb-282","tag-internet-access-speed","tag-lake","tag-law","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-lowndes-county-commission","tag-planning","tag-politics","tag-speed","tag-transparency","tag-valdosta","tag-valdosta-city-council"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}