This Wednesday morning, May 6th at 10:00am, the Public Utilities Committee is meeting in Room 1228 of the Legislative building on Jones St. in Raleigh to vote on HB 1252.  HB 1252 is the “Level Playing Field” bill, sponsored by Rep. Ty Harrell (D-Wake County), that would forever tie the hands of municipalities from ever offering better, faster and cheaper broadband Internet for their residents.  The city of Wilson already offers such a service called Greenlight.  After looking at what they offer for speeds and pricing, it will be understandable if you need a few moments for the anger over what you pay the “other guys” to dissipate and for your composure to return.

I am assembling a small army of outraged consumers across North Carolina to attend this critically important meeting and make our views known about HB 1252, which at its core screams anti-competition.  Everyone in North Carolina who cares about the cap issue, metered pricing, or municipal broadband needs to attend this meeting and show our feelings.  Municipal broadband is the safety valve we need to combat usage caps, price gouging, and rationed Internet.

Don’t be the hamster on the wheel spinning around and around in the cage current providers have constructed for our broadband service.  We deserve better, and we can make a difference!  Cable and telephone providers refuse to make the upgrades we demand and deserve.  Without competition, why spend the money to upgrade?  Let them get away with this, and you can be assured of slow speeds and bad service indefinitely.

Make an investment in yourself and your community and come to Raleigh this Wednesday morning.  Let’s demonstrate once again that organized consumers do not have to sit back and simply take what they give us.

When: Wednesday, May 6 10:00AM

Where: North Carolina Legislature Building, 16 West Jones Street, Raleigh (Here is a Google map of the area.)  Room 1228

Additional Information:  Be sure to follow any comments left on this article for last minute updates/information.  There is also a Facebook Group to oppose this bill and get late-breaking news and developments.

Jay Ovittore lives in North Carolina and is coordinating a pushback against corporate sponsored protection bills like HB 1252 and SB 1004 in the state legislature.

The first fallacy of HB 1252 can be found in its name, Level Playing Field/Cities/Service Providers. Would a level playing field exist where companies like Time Warner Cable and Embarq are exempted from the rules enacted in the bill, because they are private providers? No. The bill states very clearly all of the restrictions are on municipalities, all of the freedom from the restrictions go to private industry. This bill does not create a level playing field – it empties it of municipal projects leaving Time Warner and Embarq exactly where they are today, enjoying the fruits of a duopoly.

What do you think Time Warner would do if they had to follow these rules and regulations? They would fight the bill as anti-competitive, which it is. HB 1252 does one thing very well – preserves the de-facto duopoly for the companies that already provide service.

Sure, you could argue that municipalities could still technically set up service under this bill. But, what taxpayer is going to allow their City Council or County Commission to borrow money like a private business? Prohibited from consideration are bond initiatives and grants from foundations, as well as access to the $4.7 billion in stimulus money from the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA), to provide state of the art broadband to underserved parts of our country. So one could say that HB 1252 is prohibiting the Reinvestment and Recovery of North Carolina’s economy.

Congress’ own studies and research shows ARRA funding is critical to the deployment of rural broadband, which simply will exist in no other way. In this part of the country, outside of the largest cities we are are all underserved by cable and telephone broadband providers. What community wouldn’t if the incumbent providers capped and limited usage at radically higher prices.

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Your ship's captain for a catastrophic anti-consumer cruise sponsored by Time Warner

Representative Harrell, we honestly cannot understand your surprise over the outrage and backlash that came after you handcrafted, on spec from Time Warner and its lobbying lawyers, an incredibly anti-consumer, anti-competitive, nightmare of a piece of legislation designed to destroy municipal broadband across the state of North Carolina.

Rep. Ty Harrell (D-NC), who normally considers himself a progressive Democrat, has so bumbled his way through this entire affair, he’s managed to end up on the same side as the ultra-big-corporate friendly Americans for Prosperity, which is now war-dialing its way through North Carolina with push polls and fear-monger phone messages.  If that doesn’t sound alarm bells that something isn’t right, what will?  He admits he didn’t realize North Carolina has been through this anti-consumer nonsense before.  In 2007, largely the same bill was bought and paid for by big telecom special interests, but failed to pass after elected officials realized it would antagonize their constituents into voting for anyone but them in the next election.  No kidding.

Harrell said he introduced the legislation, which amazingly channels industry wishes word for word, because ‘Time Warner approached him and asked for it,’ and even worse:

Opponents suggested a study bill, but Harrell says the industry representatives refused to consider it. “Having gone through those battles last time, the proponents of this bill were basically saying, ‘We’ve gone down that road before and we want to have it heard in committee. I said, ‘OK, since my name is on it and you’re in my district.’”

Time Warner evidently has direct access to the Ty Harrell’s Legislation Hotline, because when consumers call asking for protection from sky high rate hikes and municipal broadband competition, the only question from his office apparently is, “how did you get this number?”

Our conservative readers here get it. They know the best way to fight monopolies is to promote competition, which this bill certainly does not. Our progressive readers here get it. They know that an unregulated duopoly of providers (or monopoly in many areas) will deliver the slow service at high prices, so when private companies aren’t interested in delivering, their own community should step up and provide better service.  Your bill trashes the dreams and hopes of both by making competition impractical and monopolies/duopolies a sure thing across the state.

It’s a real shame the only ones that don’t get it are elected officials who do the bidding of big cable and don’t have the wisdom to realize the way to survive this consumer catastrophe is not to be a part of it in the first place.  Perhaps voters will need to remind them.

Contact Information:

Phone:      919-733-5602
Email:     [email protected]

Rep. Ty Harrell
NC House of Representatives
16 W. Jones Street, Room 2121
Raleigh, NC 27601-1096

North Carolina residents get pro-industry "push poll" calls.

When it comes to representing the rights and profits of big business, there is no better friend to turn to than “Americans for Prosperity,” a front group designed to protect the prosperity of big corporate interests and their fat cat friends who write checks to keep these groups in business.

The group’s “North Carolina chapter” has recently been exposed as being behind a scam push poll operation and harassing recorded message campaign calling residents in or near communities with planned municipal broadband systems.  The messages, and the group, attempt to put a conservative political spin on municipal broadband, hoodwinking state residents into thinking there is some sort of government takeover of broadband in the state, financed with tax dollars.

Of course, the municipal broadband systems under consideration in the state are being financed by bond issues that do not co-mingle taxpayer funds, and the systems are designed to be self-sustaining through subscription revenues.  Many were built from expanding municipal fiber networks originally intended to serve local government.  They are being proposed in areas where incumbent cable and telephone companies have deemed those communities “sufficiently served” by broadband, at inadequate speeds and high prices (and soon to be much higher if tiered pricing returns).

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This week, StoptheCap! will be paying extra attention to the events in North Carolina, as the state legislature continues its review of two bills that would effectively end municipal broadband competition across the state.  Competition is a key asset in dealing with rogue corporate providers that leverage the lack of competitiveness in a market with high prices and comparatively bad service.  Time Warner, among other incumbent providers, have been heavily engaged in trying to stop municipal competition before it spreads around the state.

If you are a resident of North Carolina, this is your action week.  Without the potential threat of municipal broadband, big providers can keep your access capped, metered, and slow.  Threaten them with the potential of competition, and your access to the latest broadband technology is a much safer bet.

If you are outside of North Carolina, you should still be paying close attention to this issue.  If your community is stuck with a single provider of fast broadband threatening to impose profit parties through caps and metered billing, and the other provider in town offers slow service, is unavailable, or threatens to cap as well, municipal broadband is a mighty powerful sword to wave at bad actors.  Protecting the ability to build such a system requires vigilance from bad legislation hand-written by big cable and their lobbyist friends to ban or restrict this tool.

Get involved, for your own sake, even if your local community doesn’t have a system on the drawing board… yet.