By Allan Maurer
RESEARCH TRIANGLE, NC – North Carolina consumers and businesses would pay more for slower Internet access if communities are preempted from building broadband infrastructure according to a new analysis released today by the Institute for Self-Reliance’s New Rules Project.
Since the new speaker of the North Carolina House, Thom Tillis of Mecklenburg, supported banning community broadband service, “It would boggle my mind if Time Warner took its lobbyists and went home now,” says Christopher Mitchell, Director of ILSR’s Telecommunications as Commons Initiative.
“Many communities are looking at the success of these networks and want to duplicate them,” he says.
Recent years have seen attempts in the General Assembly to ban or limit community networks and a new bill in 2011 is inevitable. The bill could derail North Carolina’s goal to be a hotbed for innovation and technology and harm the economy by hurting small businesses. This analysis shows that community fiber networks are faster and cheaper than incumbent cable and telephone networks in North Carolina.
“North Carolina would harm its economic future if it decides to limit broadband competition,” says Mitchell. “Communities should have the freedom to build their own networks. Time after time they’ve proven better for subscribers.”
Price and service comparison favors community systems
The New Rules Project’s latest analysis compared the Internet service options and prices available to residents of both Charlotte and the Raleigh-Durham area to those available to residents of Salisbury and Wilson.
Salisbury and Wilson because both built community fiber networks that offer faster connections to residents and businesses at more affordable prices. They offer 100mbs speeds and higher that dwarf most offerings from commercial providers.
New Rules Project analysts are concerned that banning community networks would hit North Carolina small businesses—both in major metro areas and in rural areas—especially hard. Internet speed, cost, and reliability are already drivers of business location—and can only be expected to increase in importance. Upstream and downstream speeds impact the effectiveness of digital age business necessities that increasingly depend on “the cloud.”
“The reliance on big national phone and cable companies isn’t working. They are too reluctant to invest in the broadband infrastructure we
need to remain competitive, which is why we have seen communities step up to build their own faster, more reliable, and less expensive broadband networks,” says Mitchell.
The commercial providers and their allies in state government claim that municipalities have unfair advantages in the commercial realm and claim their attempts to halt, limit or forbid community networks is merely an effort to “level the playing field.”
They also argued that the bill proposed last year would grandfather in already existing networks, but Mitchell says a close reading of the bill suggests that’s only true if “They never spend another dime on the system.” That means they could not upgrade, improve, or fix their networks, essentially, he says.
The Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) proposes a set of new rules that builds community by supporting humanly scaled politics and economics.
The rules call for: Decisions made by those impacted communities accepting responsibility for the welfare of their members and the next generation. Households and communities possessing or owning sufficient productive capacity to generate real wealth. NewRules.org discusses the importance of rules and catalogs the best. We make the rules and the rules make us.”
For more information see:
Six months to act
Municipal broadband battle rages on
Southeast Venture Conference, February 29 – March 1, 2012 at the Ritz Carlton in Tysons Corner, VA – Where Smart Money Meets Smart People.
www.seventure.org
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Tags: Charlotte, community broadband faster and cheaper, NC, New Rules project, Raleigh Durham, Salisbury, Wilson
