Category: North Carolina

Google and Intel letters about HB1587

Check out these two letters. One from Google’s State Policy Council John Burchett [PDF] and one from Intel’s Director of Communications policy Peter K. Pitch [PDF]. Both are to Speaker of the House Joe Hackney, Gov. Easley, and other Committee Representatives. They both speak against HB1587!

Google strongly opposes HB1587 and Intel writes in support of municipal network creation. Its wonderful to see these companies side with North Carolina municipalities.

It also bolsters my theory that the creation of HB1587 was motivated by the desire of Telecommunications companies to save old business models by buying legislation. New business models of the 21st century depend on open networks. Local municipalities can create open networks that support this model.

How hb1587 has changed

MuniWireless has a post called Stop the North Carolina anti-muni broadband bill that describes the changes just made to hb1587.

In short, HB 1587 is bad for the communities of North Carolina and bad for United States as a whole. It is particularly offensive because it is touted as being necessary to achieve a “level playing field” for the incumbent communications providers, yet the incumbents do not, and could not, comply with HB 1587 themselves. To determine how bad a bill HB 1587 really is, the North Carolina legislature need only ask the incumbents whether they would be willing to abide by its restrictions themselves. HB 1587 should be defeated in its entirety.

Here is the new bad bill. HB1587_as_amended_June_6_2007.pdf

Second story from WRAL about HB1587

New peice from WRAL about hb1587 called Committee OKs Bill to Limit Municipal Telecom Plans. Check out the text here and the video here. This one was pretty factual with a good balance between the views. But I just don’t agree this is about any kind of fairness. No matter what big telecom says we need to have a democratically elected body providing infrastructure. Now and well into the future. Elected bodies will serve North Carolinians. If not we will elect someone else. Can the same be said about the telcom business? No. Not in this day and age where Ma Bell has returned from the dead.

Greensboro worries about HB1587

Story from the News&Record called Internet bill worries Greensboro about The City of Greensboro’s take on this bad bill hb1587. Nice to see some reporting on this from the Triad.

Bill opponents are most concerned about the ability to offer Internet access, which is increasingly seen as a necessity for businesses and education. They say the proposed restrictions could hurt municipal efforts to recruit businesses or help bring affordable broadband Internet to lower-income areas.

“Broadband is just that important. It’s just like bringing in electricity or water or gasoline, it’s that much of a need,” said ToNola Brown-Bland, an assistant city attorney for Greensboro.

Hey Blogsboro! What say you? Respect and love to my fellow blogging North Carolinians! You should be worried about this too! 🙂

HB1587 passes Utilities Committee

Greater Access to Technology for Everyone

I went to the NC House Utilities Committee meeting this morning. It was held in the North Carolina Legislature building. I’d never been inside before and it was an eye opening experience. I was there to oppose The Local Government Fair Competition Act. Man this bill is anything but fair for local governments and its citizens!

I was extremely proud that Mark Kleinschmidt and Sally Greene, two of my local elected officials, were there too. Lots of people attended who opposed the bill also. The room was standing room only. (That green logo with the acronym G.A.T.E. was also a sticky badge many of us wore at the meeting. Thanks to the work of the City of Wilson.)

Many people, including myself, wanted to speak. But in the end only two people were allowed too. Wade Hargrove, an attorney for the Telecommunications Industry, and Wilson Mayor Bruce Rose.

Mr. Hargrove’s sound bite of the day was, “If you had closed your eyes at the hearing last week [May hearing of this committee], you might have thought you were in Moscow.” Yep. You read that right. He brandished the commie boogie man label. In a room full of local elected officials who’ve sworn to uphold the American way. I’d hazard a bet that they are all capitalist. But in this day and age of right wing control of the USA its ok to pretend you are for us or a commie pinko. Has this man ever heard of socially responsible business practices? Many of the people in the audience laughed out loud at his remark. Some went as far to tell him as he waked by that his statement was taking it too far.

Mayor Rose read a prepared speech defending his City’s work and the rights of citizens to have public infrastructure. In this case a fiber optic network that carries broadband Internet to the people of Wilson, NC. Their network construction is well underway. I have to say I’m jealous. The idea of having megabit fiber coming to my house is enticing. Some lucky people in Wilson will have a great resource at their disposal very soon. The entrepreneurial opportunities will be pretty great I bet.

Please read Sally’s post called When is a public utility not a public utility?. She took great notes. Writer extraordinar Fiona Morgan was in attendance too. She wrote a story for the Indy about this terrible bill called Cities fight bill to limit broadband.

The bill [HB1587] has strong backing on the committee—four of its members are co-sponsors, including committee chair Saunders and Vice Chair Rep. Harold Brubaker (R-Randolph). Its other sponsor, Rep. Hugh Holliman (D-Davidson), is on the finance committee. Campaign finance records show that all five of the bill’s sponsors accepted $4,000 or more in contributions from industry PACs (view chart, “The money connection”). In fact, Wells, who spoke on behalf of the industry at the hearing, personally gave $400 to Brubaker’s campaign last year.

Fiona pledged to continue to cover this story as it develops.

More documentation of this meeting coming soon…

Wilson, NC builds fiber network and fights HB1587

I found this cool blog called The Fiber Optic Files – Wilson, NC today. Its written by Brian Bowman, the Public Affairs Manager for the City of Wilson. He linked to my post about the bad bill NC HB 1587. From there I learned more about the fiber network Wilson is constructing and the wonderful resolution [PDF] the Wilson City Council passed in opposition to HB 1587.

This blog also pointed me two great pieces in the Wilson Times. One is a article called Fiber bill faces nays. Both the City Manager and City Attorney of Wilson were quoted in this article. Check this out:

Wilson city manager Grant Goings said local governments have a strong history of stepping up and providing critical infrastructure when the profit motivation is not high enough to entice private sector investment.

“I suspect that there were some unhappy well drillers when the city built a public water supply system, and I doubt our sewer system was good for the septic tank business. But to move communities forward you have to invest in infrastructure,” Goings said.

Exactly! There is a long history in the United States of attempts to block the creation of public infrastructure. Water is one good historical example, so is rural telephone, and now broadband Internet. Many important services are not always profitable but are still necessary. (not to say that providing broadband to everyone wouldn’t be profitable….)

City attorney Jim Cauley said the House bill was written and supported by the telecommunications industry and is “clearly designed to protect their pocketbooks at the expense of the public good.”

“In the interest of corporate protectionism, it will create such a barrier to the construction of municipal broadband infrastructure that many citizens will not have access to high-speed fiber-optic services in the foreseeable future, thereby making our economic development efforts that much more difficult,” Cauley said.

More good points! I’d love to hear more elected officials in Chapel Hill and Carrboro speak to this.

Plus there is another Wilson Times editorial called Bill would protect monopolies.

The short title of the bill is “The Local Government Fair Competition Act,” but the honest title should be “The Monopolies Protection Act.”

The bill, which is in committee in the N.C. House, would establish a series of hurdles for local governments seeking to provide communications services, including telephone, cable television and Internet connections. While some of the provisions can be justified, others are transparently intended to discourage cities or counties from creating competing networks, such as the fiber-optic network the city of Wilson is already installing.

The bill, whose sponsors include House Majority Leader Hugh Holliman and former Speaker Harold Brubaker, would for the first time require the N.C. Utilities Commission to regulate a municipal function. None of the usual municipal utilities — water, sewer, electricity or natural gas — is regulated by the Utilities Commission, which was established to protect consumers against monopolistic corporate giants. Because consumers are also voters and can change leadership at the next election, municipal utilities have been considered self-regulating.

Great to learn about people in other municipalities fighting HB1587!

Why you should care about the Carrboro Citizen

Jock Lauterer has a straight to the point bit of witting in this weeks Carrboro Citizen called Why we should support our hometown newspaper. My fav part:

So why is this new paper special? How is it different from the others? And why should you care about whether The Citizen fails or flourishes?

To answer those questions, let’s go to little Yerington, Nev., where that town’s 3,700-circulation weekly paper, the Mason Valley News, bears the following unequivocal motto beneath it’s nameplate:

“THE ONLY NEWSPAPER IN THE WORLD THAT GIVES A DAMN ABOUT YERINGTON.”

There you go. The Citizen is the only newspaper in the world that really cares about Carrboro. And here’s my proof: Why has there never before been a full-fledged, standalone, all-local newspaper in Carrboro?

Because historically publishers have looked at Carrboro not as a community but as a market.

Market obsession is the problem with media in general. Too much concern about profit and not enough about good journalism. Profit and good journalism aren’t mutally exlusive. But service is more important than gigantic paydays.

I’m going to snag that nameplate for a bit after I modify it to suit my needs. 🙂

Stop NC HB 1587: Prevent Big Telecom from killing Muni WiFi

As I write this NC HB 1587 is before the Utilities Committee for consideration. Big Telecommunications companies want to prevent democratically elected bodies from bringing broadband Internet access to everyone.

Please ask your NC state Rep to vote No or ask their colleague to vote No!

Here is a Microsoft Excel document with a list of the Utilities Committee members. They are from the following counties: Randolph, Rowan, Rockingham, Nash, Hallifax, Mecklenburg, Onslow, Guilford, Iredell, Surrey, Yadkin, Davie, Iredell, Cumberland, New Hanover, and Pender Counties.

Here is what the NC League of Municipalities had to say about this bad bill:

Telecom companies want to restrict local government authority to provide communications services to citizens

Last session, the telecommunications companies pushed for and won statewide franchising of video services, claiming that the local franchising process hampered competition. That state franchising legislation imposed very little regulation and did not require companies to serve an entire community.

Now, the telecom companies are pushing HB 1587 ­ Local Government Fair Competition Act, which would place significant roadblocks and restrictions on any local government that wants to provide communications services ­ including cable, telephone, electronic voice, data, audio or video transmission and Internet access ­ to its citizens.

Access to high-speed broadband service is critical for the future economic development of our state as we attempt to replace our lost textile, tobacco, and furniture jobs. HB 1587 will effectively prevent local governments from bringing high-speed broadband to North Carolina communities, especially to rural and distressed urban areas. Through their opposition to build-out requirements, the industry has made it clear they have no intention of investing in such areas.

Municipalities are already subject to numerous public scrutiny and public accountability requirements for all infrastructure projects. These new Draconian requirements are simply designed to prevent deployment of local broadband networks, whether done alone or even in partnership with the private sector.

The League opposes HB 1587 because it seeks to undermine local authority to undertake enterprise activities ­ authority that has been upheld by the courts.

This bill was scheduled for discussion before the House Public Utilities Committee this week, but was not taken up. Please call your representatives and ask them to oppose this bill.

(cross posted from BlueNC)

Creativity from Distruction – Public Art

We just learned that a popular and beloved peice of public art in Carrboro, North Carolina is gone. It was painted over suddenly. Read all about this on Orange Politics, The News and Observer, and The Carrboro Citizen. Here is my idea of what to do next. (cross posted from the comments on OP)

In light of the fact that the old mural is gone this is an excellent opportunity for the Town to make lemon aid outa’ lemons. (sorry for the tired analogy) 🙂

I suggest that ya’ll create a official town graffiti contest. (YES embrace the word graffiti. Contradict the negative connotation that graffiti is only for gang bangers) Identify some talented local spray can artists who will have a “battle”. They can compete on creating two separate pieces of street art at the same time. They would have a time limit. Say 48 hours.

In conjunction with this contest you could set aside a piece of the wall just for random graffiti and stencil art (etc) by anyone. It would be painted over every two weeks or a month. That way you get lots of interesting art over time, cover over offensive gang stuff, and teach people about the beauty of change.

This is a constructive way to get creative kids involved in their community instead of “defacing” property. I think we may even be able to get the police involved in working with the kids on making some spray art. That is the kind of out reach that could work and the Town of Carrboro could pull off.

I realize this would require property owner permission. If not at the mural across from the century center then else where.

Lets embrace the art of youth!