Since August 2016, the small community of Pinetops has been on the verge of losing their best connection to the 21st century - high quality Internet access. The North Carolina Legislature has a chance to change all that this session with legislation that will carve out an exception to restrictive state laws that prevent a local municipal provider from serving this rural town.

The State Blocks Service

When the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit reversed the FCC’s preemption of state law restricting geographical reach of broadband from municipal electric utilities, Pinetops was in a pickle. Nearby Wilson had extended its Greenlight high capacity Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) service to the tiny community where residents and businesses were still slumping on DSL, dialing up, or not connected at all. The court’s reversal required the city of Wilson to risk losing their ability to serve their own community if they continued to do business as a provider for Pinetops.

The only way Pinetops and another customer outside Wilson County - Vick Family Farms - could continue with Greenlight was when the City Council voted to continue temporary service at no charge. Elected officials made the decision based on the expectation that legislators would introduce proposals to carve out exceptions for both Pinetops and the Vick Family Farm, commercial potato farm also located outside of Wilson County. Last week, they made good on that promise.

Reps Step In To Help

Representatives Susan Martin (R) and Jean Farmer-Butterfield (D), both from Wilson, introduced HB 396, which allows Wilson to expand Greenlight to Pinetops and the area in Nash County where Vick Family Farms is located. The legislation would allow the Nash County business to continue with the service it needs for daily operations. Pinetops is located in Edgecombe County. North Carolina’s restrictions prevent municipal networks like Greenlight from...

This is the transcript for episode 242 of the Community Broadband Bits podcast. Our Christopher Mitchell invites Professor Susan Crawford to reflect on her recent travels through North Carolina and Tennessee. Both states have restricted communities from building new municipal networks. Listen to this episode here.

Susan Crawford: It's much more about a very bipartisan, quite progressive group of people thinking about how to make life better in their communities, and that's terrific. That's truly American.

Lisa Gonzalez: This is episode 242 of the Community Broadband Bits podcast from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. I'm Lisa Gonzalez. We're pleased to have Susan Crawford back on the show this week. She's a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, but she's also served as Special Assistant to President Obama for science, technology and innovation policy. Susan's CV is too long for us to go through point by point. She's authored several publications, including The Responsive City: Engaging Communities Through Data-Smart Governance, and The Telecom Industry and Monopoly power in the New Gilded Age. She's been on the show before to talk with Christopher about access to high-quality connectivity, and it's always a pleasure to have her back. As it turns out, Susan has been on a walkabout of sorts, visiting local communities as she works on her current book, and in this discussion she shares her impressions with Christopher. She's got some ideas on how she feels are the most effective ways to bring better connectivity to the most people, especially in rural areas, and she and Christopher hash through her findings.

Christopher Mitchell: Hey, folks. This is Chris Mitchell, the host of Community Broadband Bits, and I just wanted to ask you if you could do us a real big favor to help us spread this show around. And that's to jump on iTunes or Stitch or wherever you found this show and to give us a rating. Give us a little review. Particularly if you like it. If you don't like it so much then maybe don't do that, but if you're...

For local schools, finding ways to cut costs can be challenging but allows more money to be spent directly on students. While trimming small costs here and there adds up, eliminating leased lines from telephone companies and making the change to VoIP phone systems can be a big savings with improved service. Pitt County Schools in North Carolina are one of the latest to upgrade and save big.

Goodbye Copper, Hello Fiber

The district owns a fiber optic network and has ditched copper wire telephone service in favor of a new VoIP system at nine of its facilities. The cost to replace the phone system at those facilities was $32,000 but the district reclaimed $13,000 so far by eliminating the need to lease copper phone lines.

District officials plan to replace all the phones in the district with a fiber based system at a cost of $210,000, pending the availability of funding. They estimate annual savings will be approximately $107,000, so the project will pay for itself in less than two years.

More Than A Trend

Carroll County Public Schools (CCPS) in Maryland and Austin's public schools in Texas found that switching from traditional phone lines to VoIP supported by fiber saved their districts significantly. CCPS began saving approximately $400,000 per year when they partnered with the county and several other entities to develop the Carroll County Public Network (CCPN). Austin Independent School District (AISD) collaborated with several other entities in Austin, Texas, and AISD’s investment in their network paid for itself in less than 3 years. In 2011, AISD estimated they saved almost $5.8 million in telephone and Internet connectivity avoided costs.

It's Not All About The Money

In Pitt County, school officials are finding better service is an added benefit:

In addition to saving money, the new phone system offers a variety of features, such as online call history and voicemail, an easier system for connecting calls to classrooms, better call quality and a...

We have already seen Virginia and Missouri take up legislation to preempt local control and deter municipal networks. Although bearing innocuous names such as the “Virginia Broadband Deployment Act,” these bills stifle competition instead of empowering communities. 

Local governments, however, have often stepped forward to champion municipal networks and push back against state preemption bills. We’ve collected several over the years. Let these excerpts of resolutions from years past inspire you throughout the rest of 2017:

2011 - Chapel Hill, North Carolina: “WHEREAS, historically it was government that funded much of the current corporate telecommunications infrastructure in the United States and government paid for and developed the Internet on which these providers depend for their profit…” (Read more here.)

2013 - Alpharetta, Georgia: “WHEREAS, House Bill 282 would tie the hands of municipal officials in their efforts to build digital networks they need to attract economic development and create a high quality of life for their citizens...” (Read more here.) 

2014 - The Louisiana Municipal Association: “WHEREAS, local governments, being closest to the people are the most accountable level of government and will be held responsible for any decisions they make...” (Read more here.)

Many other cities have also passed resolutions opposing state legislation and encouraging local control, including:

• Asheville, North Carolina
• ...