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Tell HN: NC govenor refuses to veto H.129, municipal Internet over?

5 points by knieveltech ↗ HN
It looks like North Carolina is about to pass a bill that will hinder or outright prohibit municipalities from offering their own internet service to residents.

Ratified bill: http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/Sessions/2011/Bills/House/HTML/H129v6.html

One viewpoint on why this sucks: http://www.muninetworks.org/content/digging-h129-another-bill-nc-limit-local-authority-and-broadband-competition

Is this the beginning of the end of municipal internet service?

2 comments

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hga
What makes you think that the rest of the nation will follow "The California of the East Coast" as I've heard North Carolina described? The last time I checked some states like Utah that are much more poorly served by ILECs and cable companies have healthy municipal level broadband efforts.

On the other hand Utah has 1/3 the population of NC, the stakes are much lower there. But I don't see how corruption of this sort is likely to spread widely, especially given how hard it was to just pass this law in NC (several years and several tries as I recall).

knieveltech
During the run-up to this getting passed I encountered a number of articles that speculated having this kind of legal precedence might entice broadband providers to push similar legislation around the country. Of course IANAL, so I was hoping one (or several) might chime in on how likely that is.