I was unable to attend this morning’s meeting of the Senate Commerce Committee, but just received a text message from Senator Don Vaughn, who represents me, indicating they sent SB 1004 to the “study committee.”

It has been a wild ride the last two days.  There was an estimated 150 people in the House Committee meeting yesterday.  Everyone from ordinary consumers like us, mayors of cities interested in our fight, to the pro-business/cable “Americans for Prosperity” who showed up wearing anti-communism buttons.

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The companion bill in the North Carolina Senate that would have effectively killed municipal networks across the state has gone the way of the House bill HB 1252 — into the black hole of the “study committee.”  While the issue may yet re-emerge after it “has been studied,” it’s dead for now.  Thank you to everyone in North Carolina who responded with an outpouring of calls and e-mails to elected officials in the Senate after big cable tried a sneak attack to ram this through this morning.

This is your third victory for consumer rights in less than a month.  We’re on a roll!

Rep. Ty Harrell, who we’ve been lobbying very hard to get to drop a nasty anti-consumer bill designed to stop municipal broadband, has accepted that the matter requires considerable additional review, and HB 1252 has been buried for the year in a “study committee” to “review” its impact.

In North Carolina politics, that usually means an elected official waded too far out in deep water and needs a lifesaver, and the “bill needs further study” approach is a great way to survive an angry constituent bees nest.  The “study committee” will review the legality of the measure and consider the issue before bringing a report back to the House and Senate for consideration, but a number of pieces of legislation that end up going this route are never heard from again.

We’ve received reports the hearing room was packed with people.  Among the “pro-HB1252” audience were people supporting the astroturfing “Americans for Prosperity,” a pro-corporate group that pelted North Carolina residents with harassing recorded calls earlier this week.  The “anti-HB1252” audience was made up of consumers sent by StoptheCap! and Jay Ovittore’s Facebook group fighting Time Warner Cable on various fronts in his home state, as well as representatives from municipalities, advocates for fiber network development, and supporters who learned about the event from Free Press.

This represents our second pro-consumer victory in less than a month against big cable and telco companies.  Thank you to everyone who made calls, sent e-mail, lobbied their elected officials, and attended today’s event.  To those that supported this nonsense in the first place, unless we note an acknowledgment of the mistakes made in supporting this anti-consumer nightmare, this will be an issue we’ll be reminding voters of come next election day.  This remains a fundamental consumer issue, and who stood with and against consumers will need to be revisited.

Bad weather across the state is leading in the news today across the region, but we’ll have further developments on this story later today.

In 2007, when Time Warner and their lobbying friends were up to no good trying to kill off municipal broadband, Google joined the battle to preserve freedom of choice and the powerful tool municipal broadband has to provide communities with advanced services incumbent providers refuse to offer.  The bill died two years ago due to a growing opposition.

In 2009, the cable lobby was back trying to sneak this same bad legislation through once again.  This time, they’ve found some new opposition they hadn’t counted on before:

1. Consumers!  It’s payback time for Time Warner Cable and other companies who sought to abuse their customers with ridiculous rate hikes, usage caps, and tiered access plans nobody wants.  Since they continue to refuse to completely abandon these profit grabbing schemes, ordinary citizens have organized and are willing to fight them on every front where their mischief stands to hurt consumers with higher pricing, reduced choice, and the creation on broadband backwaters.  In North Carolina, where the Triad was victimized with a Time Warner “experiment,” residents are joining forces and telling their elected officials to vote NO on HB 1252 and SB 1004, which are monopoly protection bills designed to thwart competition.  Consumers will remain vigilant until cable drops plans to gouge customers with tiered pricing and caps, in writing, and competes on merit, not on special favors.
2. Google is back with a letter to the Speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives, co-signed by consumer advocacy groups and high technology companies who see how much this legislation will stifle North Carolina’s economy and high tech recovery.

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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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