[Editor’s Note: This past spring, big telecommunications interests in North Carolina tried to pass industry friendly legislation to keep municipal broadband competition out of the marketplace.  For the last several years, this industry has invaded state legislatures with the help of their astroturf front groups to try and pass legislation that puts all of the benefit in their corner and none in yours.  In North Carolina, an industry-written bill to lock out municipal broadband competition was introduced in both houses of the state legislature.  At least one legislator literally handed phone calls off to industry lobbyists when constituents called.

Too often, state politicians end up doing the business of big business, passing bills that hurt communities and people in their own districts, and hope constituents don’t find out what is really going on when anti-consumer legislation gets passed with a wink and a nod. All that’s left to do is cash that generous campaign donation check!

When municipalities in the state are told the duopoly of providers won’t provide a level of service communities need, they dared to build their own. HB1252 would have made that next to impossible. Your direct involvement in calling and writing North Carolina officials to let them know you understood what this anti-consumer legislation represented stopped the special interests in their tracks. You even outmaneuvered astroturf groups like Americans for Prosperity that tried to fool legislators into believing North Carolina citizens supported this terrible bill.

But like in all horror shows, what is left for dead often rises to terrorize the countryside yet again. We’ll be watching and waiting… and we’ll be ready. — Phillip Dampier]

HB1252 has officially been sent to a study committee as part of a huge omnibus study bill, HB945. The North Carolina budget has been passed and signed.

Unfortunately, it will be the Revenue Laws Committee which will control the study, which is run by Senator Hoyle and the rest of the big business boys in the House and Senate. The last version of HB1252 said it would go to study in both the Joint Select Committee on High Speed Internet in Rural Communities and Revenue Law, but it appears that the good ole business boys got their way. Who controls the study often controls the results.

The offensive language in the original bill that would have represented a direct threat to municipal broadband projects will die in study either way, but expect to see it resurface early in the next full session.

Version three of HB1252, A Bill To Be Entitled An Act Authorizing The Joint Select Committee On High Speed Internet In Rural Communities And The Revenue Laws Study Committee To Study Local Government Owned And Operated Services, is available to read here.

Enjoy your summer and prepare for battle in the coming months.