In South Carolina (the state TWC Forgot), AT&T is pushing harsher restrictions on any publicly owned broadband system in an attempt to derail one or more broadband stimulus projects. South Carolina already greatly restricts community broadband networks, likely one of the reasons no incumbent there bothers to upgrade in a similar time frame as the rest of the country.

This should be seen a significant overreach -- AT&T is trying to shut down County efforts to improve middle mile access -- whereas most preemption tends to heavily restrict community last-mile networks. This is a whole new world of anti-competitive policy to favor AT&T (not dissimilar from what AT&T wants to do in Wisconsin and Fairpoint did in Maine).

The bills would force Oconee County to follow guidelines as a broadband service provider that would likely cripple the county’s current three-year project to construct 245 miles of broadband cable, county administrator Scott Moulder said.

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Oconee County’s goal is to be a so-called “middle mile” provider, Moulder said, essentially providing a network that would allow private broadband providers to extend their service into areas they aren’t serving. In most cases, those are areas where the private providers have found it is not financially feasible to install their own infrastructure.

AT&T, Moulder said, has been asked to be a partner in the project as a retailer, but the company’s current actions are a rebuff.

The Oconee project is meant to attract additional independent service providers to invest in projects, not the County itself. But that hardly matters to AT&T, which wants to preserve the present lack of competition in order to maximize their gains at the public expense.

The Bill, S 483 is viewable here and contains the same old tired arguments claiming...

For years, the North Carolina General Assembly has considered bills pushed by cable lobbyists to ban community networks. A new analysis from the folks at MuniNetworks.org shows that community fiber networks offer the most advanced services in the state -- faster speeds at lower prices. Preempting these community networks would cripple North Carolina's ability to compete in the digital future.

Read the Report [pdf]
Read the Press Release

Following on the heels of similar findings for Minnesota, smaller towns in North Carolina that have built community owned fiber networks offer far superior services to those found in the metro area around Charlotte and the famous Research Triangle.

The two community fiber networks are Wilson's Greenlight and Salisbury's Fibrant. We have written frequently about both - Fibrant coverage and Greenlight coverage.

A chart and explanation from the report:

Comparing the tiers of residential service from Wilson or Salisbury against the providers in the Raleigh area (figure 4), shows that the communities have invested in a network that offers far faster speeds for less money than any of the private providers (Greenlight offers more packages than depicted as only unbundled options are displayed). Whether communities in North Carolina are competing against other states or internationally for jobs and quality of life, they are smart to consider investing in a community fiber network.

This chart actually uses the new FCC definition for “basic broadband,” which is 4 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps upstream. The packages that are plotted below and to the left of the origin are no longer technically broadband. Notice how many of the plans offered by private providers barely qualify as broadband. In fact, as neither AT&T nor Time Warner Cable offer upstreams of at least 1Mbps in Raleigh, their...

We continue to watch in slow motion horror as North Carolina's General Assembly considers turning its back on next-generation networks and compute like it's 1999. This would be the effect of S.1209's proposed ban on communities from building their own networks - as they have been the only parties interested in moving North Carolina into a modern communications infrastructure rather than last-generation DSL and cable networks.

Stop the Cap! offered this wrapup of the process in the Senate. The next stop for this bill is in the House Ways and Means/Broadband Connectivity Committee. Another Stop the Cap! piece explains who to call with contact information.

Wherever you are, make sure your representatives know that you oppose limits on communities that want to build their own infrastructure -- or your community may be next.

Update: Why would North Carolina want to ban muni networks when this is the result?

The municipal broadband debate began when Wilson instituted "Greenlight," a high speed network that competes directly with Time Warner Cable's Roadrunner. As a subscriber to Greenlight, I am very satisfied with the service I receive. If there is a problem, I speak to a tech in Wilson. That is more than I can say about my experience with Time Warner. If there were issues, I was transfered to a call station in India and the service I received was horrible.

As I have considered writing yet another post about this debacle in North Carolina, I worried that readers outside of North Carolina might ignore it, thinking they cannot help and it doesn't impact them. Well, we can all learn a lesson from the fight in North Carolina to preserve local self-determination.

The same forces that are pushing North Carolina to crush the rights of communities to build the infrastructure they need are talking to elected officials and policymakers across the country. They are saying that the U.S. really does not have a broadband problem, that people are happy with their DSL and cable options.

Elected officials and policymakers very seldom hear from the other side - as Philip Dampier notes here and reinforces in the comment section here.

Sure, most states have organizations like a League of Cities or Munis or Towns and these organization are often fairly powerful. However, very few state legislatures have anyone speaking consistently for the rights of consumers. In DC, Free Press, Public Knowledge, and Media Access Project all do good work on the federal level but have little capacity to work on the state level. I try to help in state efforts wherever possible, but we have neither the funding nor staffing to really offer substantial help on any of these issues.

Someone needs to represent the interests of broadband subscribers -- and right now the only option is YOU. The folks at Stop the Cap! often make that easier by keeping you informed and providing the information you need to contact reps and policymakers.

But you need to make the call.

When you contact your reps to tell them you are not happy with your services and your choices in broadband, they are less likely to buy the industry claims that everything is hunky-dory and there is no reason for new policies that would encourage competition or allow communities to build for themselves the networks that no one else will.

When you do not make calls or write to your Reps, they de-prioritize broadband...