Rep. Marilyn Avila (R-Time Warner Cable)

Rep. Marilyn Avila (R-Time Warner Cable) is coming under increasing scrutiny across North Carolina as her cable lobbyist-written, anti-community broadband bill — H.129 — faces negative reviews in the media across the state.

Avila’s bill would set conditions under which community-owned broadband networks could operate, while specifically exempting existing cable and phone companies.  Most observers on the ground predict Avila’s bill would kill any further expansion of public broadband networks in the state and tie the hands of those already in operation, which would inevitably drive them out of business.  Avila’s bill, ghost-written by the state’s cable companies, even has the prescience to allow the fiber systems to be sold off to cable and phone companies at fire-sale prices for as little as pennies on the dollar, without a public vote.

Last week, the state legislature’s Finance Committee put Avila’s bill on a temporary hold “to allow public input” on the bill, but also to permit scrambling by lobbyists to deal with several surprise amendments that attempt to exempt existing community networks.

That time-out has given the press a chance to examine the proposed legislation and its impact on North Carolina’s efforts to improve its mediocre broadband rankings, now 41st in the country.  More than a few in the media do not like what they see in H.129.

The Associated Press notes the state legislature was finally allowing the public to weigh in on a matter that directly impacts their Internet experience:

North Carolina lawmakers aiming to stop cities from building their own broadband networks decided Thursday to allow public comments the next time they consider the latest effort by telecom companies to keep local governments out of the business.

The House Finance Committee will hear from the public next Wednesday as it reviews legislation that would sharply restrict the chances for municipalities to step in when cable and phone companies decide not to build high-speed Internet systems in lightly populated areas. Opponents say telecom companies aren’t extending super-fast Internet at reasonable prices, and that keeps smaller communities behind in the wired world of commerce.

“They don’t want to provide these services in a lot of areas because it’s expensive, and they don’t want municipalities to offer these services. That’s an unlevel playing field for our citizens,” said Rep. Deborah Ross, D-Wake.

Legislation unveiled Thursday was changed to ease the rules for communities in which at least half the households have no access to high-speed Internet except through a satellite provider. Another change ensures the new rules don’t affect the municipal networks already established in Wilson, Salisbury, Morganton and Iredell County, which have borrowed to build their systems.

Cable and phone companies have been urging the General Assembly to restrict municipal broadband services since a 2005 state appeals court ruling upheld the right of towns and cities to offer their residents broadband. Companies argue that local governments have an unfair advantage because they don’t have to pay taxes and can subsidize their rates by shifting profits from their electricity or gas customers, undercutting the corporate competitors.

Except community broadband providers in North Carolina are not doing any of those things.

In fact, smaller providers start at a competitive disadvantage because they cannot enjoy the savings larger providers get from their extensive buying power — winning lower costs on everything from programming to equipment and services.

Community providers are not winning most of their customers from “underpricing” their service — they are earning them by delivering better service, which was precisely the point.

The original argument communities like Wilson and Salisbury had with state cable and phone companies was with the quality and level of service offered in their communities.  They solved the problem themselves with the development of fiber optic service that provides ultra-fast broadband connections that residents and small businesses simply could not get from other providers.

Some lawmakers believe community networks get in the way of cable jobs and phone company investment, and they want to “clear the playing field for business.”  But for many communities in the state, the playing field is empty and will remain so indefinitely.

Broadband: Utility or Convenience

For some lawmakers, the debate is both generational and philosophical.  Ruth Samuelson (R-Mecklenburg), told the AP she doesn’t believe providing broadband is a core part of government.

Among the older population who have not grown up with the Internet, broadband can be seen more as a luxury and less of a utility.  A few generations earlier, a similar debate erupted over telephone and electric service, which faced identical controversy in regions underserved by private utilities.

A reminder of these earlier challenges was part of the Winston-Salem Journal’s argument against H.129’s adoption:

“The broadband battle is not being waged in the heavily populated portions of the state such as the Triad. Here, the for-profit companies moved in a long time ago. They can make a very nice profit here because the population density is adequate to provide a good return on the infrastructure needed for high-speed Internet service.

“Over the past decade, however, North Carolina’s smaller municipalities, such as Wilson, Salisbury and Morganton, have built their own systems because their leaders recognized that broadband Internet is now an essential utility, just as electricity and natural gas are. The Internet-service providers did not step up to provide that essential service, so the municipalities did. In doing so, the cities followed a path they took nearly a century ago when the biggest electrical power companies did not provide service to these areas.”

North Carolina blogger-activist Mark Turner wrote in the News & Observer broadband has the capacity to transform North Carolina’s economic future in much the same way power and phone service did a century earlier:

While farm life has never been easy, at one time it was significantly harder. In the mid-1930s, over 97 percent of North Carolina farms had no electricity, many because private electric companies couldn’t make enough money from them to justify running the lines.

Aware of the transformational effect of electrification and recognizing the need to do something, visionary North Carolina leaders created rural electric cooperatives, beating passage of FDR’s Rural Electrification Act by one month. Through the state’s granting local communities the power to provide for their own needs where others would not, over 98 percent of farms had electricity by 1963, and our state has prospered.

The Internet is no less transformational than electricity. Through this world-changing technology, lives are being shared, distance learning taking place and innovative new businesses springing up. Sadly just as in the days before electrification, many North Carolina communities (particularly rural ones) are being left behind, stuck in the Internet slow lane.

The Journal argues Internet Service Providers essentially want to keep these communities in the slow lane, with a powerful cartel that doesn’t deliver service, and does not want cities to provide it either.  The cable and phone companies can’t have it both ways, the paper says. “They can’t delay bringing high-speed service to North Carolina communities but then turn around and lobby the legislature to deny local governments the authority to establish municipal service if their residents want it,” the paper editorializes.

“The private providers are trying to make a big-government argument here, one that includes clichés about unfairness and Big Brother. But that is not the case. In this situation, residents and businesses are tired of waiting for Internet-service providers to arrive, so they’ve exercised their democratic rights to seek an alternative solution through their local governments.

“Had the private companies tried to make their argument 15 years ago, they might have deserved some sympathy. But not in 2011. The Internet and high-speed access to it have now been available in North Carolina homes for well more than a decade.

“They ignored a market, and local governments stepped in to provide a critical service. The legislature should kill this bill.”

Mark Turner in the News & Observer argues nothing about H.129 is really an ideological right or left-wing debate.  He reminds readers the Internet itself was a government invention delivered through public rights-of-way established by local and state government, or over airwaves that are literally owned by the public.

“Like the electric lines that were once strung by hand to all corners of our state, our cities should retain the right to bring Internet service to their communities – especially where the private providers will not,” Turner wrote.

The Rural-Urban Disconnect: Choices in Raleigh, Sneaking Onto Wi-Fi in Spruce Pine

Spruce Pine, N.C., where one of the most popular hangouts in town is a parking lot where Wi-Fi signals deliver the only Internet service some residents can get.

The Journal points out North Carolina’s broadband debate is taking place in the state capital – Raleigh, a city much like the Triad region, served by both cable and phone companies.  Against that backdrop, legislators may assume ubiquitous urban and suburban broadband leaves local governments with few excuses for getting into the business in the first place — an argument the cable lobby is using to its advantage with some legislators.  But as soon as one ventures off Interstates 40, 77, or 95 — it does not take too long to find oneself in a broadband backwater.

“Here in Spruce Pine, broadband is a fabled, magical thing we read about, but don’t have — a big reason why my 17 year old son cannot wait to move out of here,” shares Stop the Cap! reader Morgan.  “Everything you see on television shows with people using the Internet for practically everything just does not happen here.”

Morgan shares one of the community’s broadband secrets: local hotels and other business establishments have parking lots filled with cars with people still in them sneaking online.

“They are hopping on board business and motel Wi-Fi connections to pay their bills, apply for jobs, or just complete homework assignments that require an Internet connection,” Morgan shares.  “Some businesses have locked down their Wi-Fi with passwords to stop the traffic, so there is an active underground trade of passwords of different wireless connections around the area.”

Morgan called the phone company wondering when DSL service might reach her house.

“Never, came the eventual reply — and the guy was laughing about it,” Morgan says.  “He told me if I want something better, I should probably move.”

“What burns me up is these state legislators on the other end of the state are spending their time and energy defending the companies in the broadband shortage business.  If they spent half as much time working for better broadband in western North Carolina, we would not be in this position today,” Morgan writes.  “I mean we’re at the point where people take Internet access for granted in this society and they treat places like Spruce Pine as an escape from that technology ‘to get away from it all,’ all while we live in that world perpetually.”

Morgan is hardly alone living a life without broadband.  In communities from Mars Hill to Marshall, large sections of the state simply go without.  Avila’s bill does nothing to help — it actually hurts.

The Public-Private Partnership: A Solution for North Carolina’s Unserved?

In some areas of the state, public-private partnerships (PPP’s) — also rejected in Avila’s bill — are making a difference getting broadband into rural North Carolina, reports Craig Settles, a broadband activist.

“Last year, North Carolina broadband advocates began formulating policy recommendations to make PPPs something of a standard in business models for communities that want better broadband,” Settles writes in a piece for Government Technology. “When legislation was introduced earlier this year that would effectively end further development of municipal networks in the state, this seemed like the right time to promote PPPs. Unfortunately the legislators pushing the bill effectively shut out these muni-network proponents from offering a compromise in separate negotiations.”

PPPs over some creative solutions to rural broadband challenges — especially in addressing return-on-investment concerns that keep private providers from building out networks to reach rural populations.  A community or non-profit collaborative finances and builds the infrastructure to supply the service with a much longer payback period.  While many commercial companies want a return within five years, co-ops have been comfortable paying off infrastructure projects over 10, 20, or even 25 years.  Then, the private company can hop on board the constructed network at a wholesale price that helps pay off construction costs, and allows the provider to market its services and run its own business.  The only requirement, and the one some private companies hate, is that the network is operated in the public interest and good, meaning -any- competitor can compete over the same facilities.

A successful public-private partnership in western New York could be a model to help rural North Carolina get broadband.

In the Finger Lakes Region of western New York, a hallmark PPP project has brought Ontario County a fiber network that can deliver faster broadband than anything available in nearby Rochester.  And it has the support of TW Telecom, Verizon, Frontier Communications and other companies who can use it as part of their business plans.

“This is a winning scenario,” said Ed Hemminger, CIO of Ontario County, N.Y., and CEO of Axcess Ontario, the county’s 180-mile fiber network project. “It’s the only way some communities may be able to get fiber broadband. They can finance the buildout with bond financing with a 25-year payback term. If a muni is going to partner in this manner, be extremely cautious and ensure that it’s a true open access model that not only benefits providers in the area, but also allows others to come in and compete.”

“The beauty of this scenario is that it enables private-sector companies to overcome one of their biggest hurdles to deploying networks in rural and low-income areas: the cost of laying fiber or building wireless infrastructure,” Settles writes. “Municipalities, if they’re able to swing the financing, can take up to 25 years to pay off the debt. Providers, on the other hand, have to make their money back in three to five years.”

Rebuilding America’s Economy: Investing in Infrastructure

Providing suitable broadband infrastructure is increasingly important in small cities that are afterthoughts for many cable and telephone company providers.  For Wilson, N.C.,  creating the infrastructure of a 21st century broadband network is part of an investment to attract future jobs for a city reinventing itself.

“The city council realized that it would be a very competitive world to attract and retain the best jobs in the future,” Grant Goings, Wilson city manager told The Sun News. “Well, you can’t talk about jobs without talking about the infrastructure that brings them and keeps them. Short and simple advanced broadband is critical infrastructure.”

The Sun News reports on the state’s broadband controversies from the epicenter — Wilson is the first city in the state to deliver a fiber optic-based broadband network that beats all the others on speed.

This year, Wilson signed on its first 100 megabits per second residential customers and is the first to have residents using the highest speeds available in North Carolina, said Brian Bowman, Wilson public affairs manager.

For Wilson and other communities building out better broadband networks, using fiber optics was a natural decision because of its capacity and future ease of upgrades. The cable industry has long argued broadband is a constantly-changing business and cities have a poor track record of keeping up, but Wilson’s GreenLight service has turned the tables on that argument, leaving Time Warner Cable — the state’s largest operator — well behind the municipal provider cable interests predicted would be a failure.

Wally Bowen, founder and executive director of the nonprofit Mountain Area Information Network (MAIN), which provides broadband services in and around Asheville, says this year’s anti-broadband bill, like the others, leaves cities vulnerable to political posturing and special interest legislation. He’s tried to outmaneuver legislators who work for the interests of Time Warner and CenturyLink by building non-profit or co-op ownership into the infrastructure, if only to protect networks from being forced to play defense year after year as private companies try to pick them off in the state legislature.

“Government-owned infrastructure creates political vulnerabilities given how incumbents are behaving,” Bowen said. “Our nonprofits are comprised of representatives from private-sector companies, private colleges, hospitals and so forth, in addition to local government. So there are limited legal grounds for attacking the nonprofit via laws passed in the legislature.” Some incumbent Internet service providers still will try these tactics anyway, but the makeup of these nonprofits can give them a stronger position from which to defend themselves.”

For many voters in the state, watching certain legislators toil on behalf of billion-dollar phone and cable companies while ignoring North Carolina’s broadband problems should bring consequences.

“My friends and I continue to watch these events with interest and will vote against those legislators who obviously would feel more comfortable working inside Time Warner Cable’s headquarters, because they are effectively on their payroll already,” Morgan says.

Rep. Avila (left) with Time Warner Cable's top lobbyist (right, back turned). Photo by: Bob Sepe of Action Audits

Rep. Marilyn Avila (R-Time Warner Cable) is living up to her much-deserved reputation as a shill for North Carolina’s largest cable company as she continues her campaign to wreak havoc on community-owned broadband networks and services.

Well-placed sources tell Stop the Cap! either Avila has an evil twin running around impersonating her, or she is saying one thing to a public audience while doing something completely different in private.

In a closely coordinated effort with the state’s top cable lobbyists, Avila met last Friday to negotiate promised protections for existing community-owned broadband networks that would otherwise be destroyed by her bill, H129, written by the state’s Big Telecom companies.

Both Reps. Avila and Julia Howard told us their word was their bond.  “The last thing that we want to do as a state is to harm one of our cities after they entered into the business,” Avila said to members of the Public Utilities Committee.

Howard expanded on her own promise: “The objective is to protect the cities that have already gone into the business.  It is our intent to carve out these cities and hold them harmless.  My word is my bond, and I don’t hear anybody snickering.  But when I say it I mean it, as the senior chair of finance, that is my pledge.  Before it heads into finance there will be a PCS that is satisfactory to everybody.”

Apparently those bonds were issued by Lehman Brothers, because they have lost all of their value to the people of North Carolina.  Nobody feels like snickering over such a serious betrayal of trust, especially when Howard’s definition of “everybody” is limited to lobbyists for the telecommunications industry.  Your consumer needs are irrelevant.

Last Friday’s meeting was once again a stage play from Time Warner Cable and their sidekick, the much-smaller CenturyLink.  After the cable company laid down the law to a stunned audience of representatives from communities across the state, fooled into thinking they were there to discuss an honest compromise, things went from bad to worse.

“It literally got down to the point where the cable company was dictating terms about what cities can and cannot do with their networks, even discussing which streets the networks would be allowed to serve,” our source tells us.

Avila’s stubborn streak was on full display, as she rejected proposal after proposal.

What about public private partnerships with full exemptions for pre-existing networks?

Rep. Avila's Message to North Carolinians: Live with what you've got or go without.

Not on Big Telecom’s approved list, so rejected out of hand, even after offering that she agreed with the concept.  Her reasoning?  She wants to go with her original bill.

The result of the one-sided discussion was two pages of legislative word jumbling in the form of a substitute amendment.  The word salad delivers substantially no real change to Avila’s original bill.  It contains virtually all of the same onerous provisions guaranteed to destroy community broadband networks, taking the state’s reputation for being a good credit risk with it.  It also delivers red meat to an industry meme “community broadband networks are business failures.”  Now you know why.

We predict Avila will use the farcical affair to claim her substitute amendment was the product of a “hard-fought compromise” with cities and providers.

In fact, it represents nothing more than a shameful broken promise to the citizens of North Carolina.  Their interests are completely secondary to Avila and her legislative allies, willing to listen to a telecommunications industry prepared to hand out campaign contributions to enact their agenda.

The collateral damage of Avila’s struggle to eliminate better broadband and keep competition to a bare minimum cannot even be measured yet. Should Avila’s bill become law, the clear message sent to would-be entrepreneurs is that North Carolina values their cable and phone companies over the needs of entrepreneurs contemplating the next generation of digital economy businesses.  Ms. Avila’s message to them, and to residents who want better broadband: live with what you’re getting from my friends or go without.

Many will choose a third option — avoiding setting up shop in a state where a handful of providers maintain a comfortable duopoly delivering the least amount of service for the highest possible price.

Time Warner Cable’s custom-written bill banning community-owned broadband networks in North Carolina this afternoon received a favorable vote in the Public Utilities Committee — the first to consider the bill.

Rep. Marilyn Avila (R-Time Warner Cable) decided that openly distorting the record of success community broadband has had would be a good way to proceed.  In comments before a jam-packed room this afternoon, Avila claimed fiber optic broadband systems have a long history of “failures,” which is ironic considering her promise to exempt these so-called failures from her bill’s anti-competitive regulatory regime.

Honestly, it was the first time we can recall a sitting legislator openly trashing her own state’s advanced broadband network successes.  (You can’t fault her for going all out for her friends at Time Warner Cable, but you can hold her accountable at the next election.)

Avila would never and could never admit the truth after wading this far in: these state of the art fiber networks are successful enough to have waiting lists from time to time just to get service installed.  Even those who don’t subscribe are benefiting. Just look at GreenLight, operated by the community of Wilson.  While GreenLight subscribers benefit from broadband far superior to what the cable company offers, those staying with Time Warner have seen an end to relentless annual rate increases.  Apparently Ms. Avila wants you to pay higher cable bills now and forever.

Republicans and Democrats from rural districts harshly criticized the proposed legislation for bringing no answers to the perennial problem of inadequate broadband in rural North Carolina communities, as well as the fact this bill contains customized exemptions to protect Time Warner and other Big Telecom companies from regulatory requirements dumped on community networks like a ton of bricks.

That’s favorable treatment for the cable company Ms. Avila seeks to protect at all costs.

Avila

Despite the important arguments raised by those objecting to the bill, the Committee Chair gaveled the debate to a sudden close, held a perfunctory voice vote and adjourned the session without a recorded vote.  That leaves citizens of the state with no idea how individual members voted.  Apparently they do not want to hear from unhappy constituents.

The Time Warner Cable Legislative Railroad next stops at the Finance Committee.

Although Rep. Julia Howard (R-Davie, Iredell), senior chair of that committee and Avila promise changes in the bill to protect existing community broadband operations, we are more than a little skeptical.

Last week, Avila called a meeting of city officials and several Big Telecom companies, including Time Warner and CenturyLink, partly to discuss exemption issues.  To give readers an idea of just how far Avila is in Time Warner’s corner, minutes into the meeting, she turned it over to the lobbyist from Time Warner Cable for the duration.

That’s a public-private partnership any voter in North Carolina should take a dim view about.  If Ms. Avila finds her work in the legislature too difficult to handle, perhaps she can find another line of work.  The only good thing about turning over your legislative responsibilities to the cable company is it cuts out the middleman.

Howard

The fact is, Time Warner has no interest in protecting -your- interests in North Carolina, much less those of the cutting edge fiber networks now up and running in the state.  They want them gone… or better yet, available for their acquisition at fire sale prices.  Yes, they even made sure of that in their bill, which guarantees a city can sell a fiber network hounded out of business to a Big Telecom company without a vote.

Exempting existing networks has turned out to be a highly subjective notion for Ms. Avila anyway.  She originally claimed to exempt them in her bill when it was introduced, but then subjected them to crushing regulation the cable companies do not face.  Any community contemplating starting a new network for their citizens can forget it either way.  Time Warner will not hear of it.

Although a growing number of Republicans and Democrats see Avila’s bill as a classic example of corporate overreach, without your voice demanding this bill be dropped, there still may be enough members of the state legislature willing to do the cable industry’s bidding.  If you make it clear that may cost them your support in the next election, they can be persuaded to do the right thing and vote NO.

But time is running out.  Your job is to begin melting down the phone lines of the Finance Committee members starting this afternoon.  Call and e-mail them and make it absolutely clear you expect them to vote NO on H129 and that you are closely watching this issue.  Ask each legislator for a commitment on how they plan to vote.

Finance Committee Members

Avila’s bill, H129, is up for a vote early this afternoon.  If you live in North Carolina, this is your last chance to contact the members of the committee voting on the bill and encourage them to vote NO.  Tell them you are tired of these anti-competitive bills coming up year after year.  Let them know you support community broadband, that the bill does not exempt existing networks from its lethal regulatory requirements, and that there is no need for these kinds of bills, as local governments already answer to voters.

Rep. Marilyn Avila (R-Time Warner Cable) is getting significant blowback from some of her own constituents for introducing a bill that benefits a cable company, and almost nobody else.

Avila’s district extends into the northern part of Raleigh, the capital city of North Carolina.  Now, the city is making it clear it wants no part of Avila’s bill, H129, which will guarantee residents will continue to pay escalating cable bills year after year.

Raleigh’s City Council adopted a resolution opposing Avila’s legislation, written on behalf of Time Warner Cable.

H129 will destroy North Carolina’s community-owned broadband networks and prevent new ones from launching.

Council Member Bonner Gaylord, who authored the resolution, says passage of these kinds of anti-competitive bills would stop local governments from providing needed communications services, especially advanced high-speed broadband, and deny local governments the availability of federal grants under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to assist in providing affordable access to high-capacity broadband service in unserved and underserved areas.

North Carolina’s broadband rankings do not speak highly of the state’s existing broadband penetration, speeds, or pricing.  Large parts of western North Carolina lack broadband altogether, and what is available is often very slow speed DSL, often providing just 1.5Mbps service.  The mountainous western areas of the state are not well-reached by cable companies, and because of geographic and distance impediments, even telephone company DSL service is sporadically available.

Take Rockingham County, where the local government is pre-occupied with trying to find providers — any providers — to extend broadband service across the north central part of North Carolina.  Adjacent to Caswell County (which Stop the Cap! featured last year), it’s just one more example of how providers have ignored large sections of the state too rural, too poor, or too difficult for them to reach.

On Monday, Mark Wells, executive director for the Rockingham County Business and Technology Center, delivered a report to the county on his progress trying to get someone to provide service between the communities of Wentworth and Madison, which currently have no access to broadband.  Wells reports he is doing all he can to get CenturyLink, the area’s phone company, to step up and provide service, and the county is trying to see if Clearwire could extend service into the northern sections of the state.

Rockingham County, N.C.

Unfortunately, Clearwire has proved to be no broadband replacement, heavily throttling their customers to speeds that occasionally seem more like dial-up than actual broadband.

Rockingham County opposes H129 for the same reasons the city of Raleigh does.  The Board of Commissioners recognizes the broadband reality of northern North Carolina.  Unless local governments have a free hand to address the digital divide themselves, there will be no long-term solution for broadband availability in rural North Carolina.  That’s the message they are sending to their representatives in Raleigh.

Addressing the state’s broadband shortage requires public and private assistance.  Public governments can construct networks that require a longer window to pay off than private “return on investment” requirements allow, and private companies can access community networks to sell their services to the public they currently do not serve (or serve well).

But because companies like Time Warner do not want the competition, particularly from networks more advanced and capable than their own, they would prefer to see them shut down and banned — which is exactly what Avila’s bill would accomplish.

Last year, Sen. David Hoyle openly admitted Time Warner Cable wrote his bill.  There is little doubt the same is true for Avila’s bill this year.

The city of Raleigh, North Carolina

The city has an entirely different set of recommendations for Avila to consider:

1. The State of North Carolina adopt policies to encourage the development of high-speed broadband, including advanced, next-generation fiber-to-the-premises networks, in order to fully serve the citizens and advance education and economic development throughout the state;
2. The General Assembly provide incentives for both public and private development of high-capacity connections in order to handle rapidly growing data needs;
3. The General Assembly promote competition by curtailing predatory pricing practices that are used to push new providers and public broadband services out of the market; and,
4. The General Assembly reject any legislation similar to the Level Playing Field bills that would have a chilling effect on local economies and would impede or remove local government’s ability to provide broadband services to enhance economic development and improve quality of life for their citizens.

The resolution also noted that several North Carolina municipalities; including Wilson, Salisbury, Morganton, Laurinburg and Davidson, already have successfully launched local high-speed broadband networks in response to private provider’s unwillingness or inability to provide high-speed service “to serve the public and promote economic development in their respective areas.”

Consumers across North Carolina can celebrate their successful effort to protest legislation that would effectively ban community-owned broadband networks in the state.

Thanks to an outpouring of phone calls and e-mails this afternoon, legislators have been forced to delay placing the controversial legislation on the agenda for tomorrow’s planned meeting.  Our sources tell us the reason for the delay was “all of the unwanted attention” the bill was getting from outraged citizenry.

But victory may be short-lived.  The proposed legislation has been re-inserted on the agenda for a meeting to be held next Wednesday.  That means one more week for you to keep the pressure on.

Use this time to tell your friends and family to contact legislators and let them know in no uncertain terms this bill needs to be killed for good right now.  One week, one month, or one year — there is no good time for this kind of corporate welfare to become law in a state that has a long way to go to achieve top-rated broadband service.  North Carolina’s economy depends on robust, world-class broadband.

The state’s phone and cable companies are spending their money on lobbyists to defeat competition, not bring the kind of service communities in Wilson and Salisbury now enjoy.