At the meeting of the National Governors Association this weekend, the states’ top executives took up the issue of broadband access and the role that broadband plays in society. But, the tone of the meeting took a decidely anti-muni turn, according to AP’s Devona Walker.
John Rutledge, a former White House financial adviser and chairman of Rutledge Capital, a private investment firm, said that he feared municipally-owned broadband would slow down the process of building out broadband networks.
Charles King, a senior vice president for Mediacom, which provides cable television and Internet services in 1,200 cities across the country, said municipally owned broadband services would skew the true value of the service in the marketplace and create unfair competition. Though communities in Utah, Iowa, Virginia, Tennessee, California and Washington state have all created public broadband networks, Sanford was skeptical. “I’m very reticent of the unintended consequences of the public sector riding out private investment,” Sanford said. South Dakota Gov. Michael Rounds, a Republican, said he worried about government’s ability to pay for broadband improvements. “How do you suggest that we package this to sell to voters?” Rounds said. “Property taxes have been very unpopular and we have tried to keep our sales taxes to a minimum.”Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 8:21 PM | Print | Comments (1) | TrackBack
The city of Lafayette, LA won the public’s approval to move ahead with a $125 million bond to fund the city’s construction of a new fiber-based broadband system capable of delivering high-speed Internet, video programming, voice service and more.
Voters agreed by a 62% to 38% margin to give the city the go-ahead on the controversial telecommunications build, one that caught the furor of cable and phone companies and captured the national spotlight as municipalities around the country seek to build their own communications systems.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:53 AM | Print | Comments (1) | TrackBack
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