Incumbent providers, grown lazy on a steady diet of public subsidies and monopoly rents, have done their best to cast this as a debate between efficient private competitors and inefficient government monopolies. But it is the incumbents that would rather regulate than compete. They resist municipal entry not because it is incompetent – no one resists incompetent competitors – or because it is unnecessary. Rather incumbents resist municipal entry because they recognize the ability of local government to offer a genuine competitive alternative to a high priced monopoly or duopoly services.
Cities Take On AT&T, Time Warner and Verizon
We have a piece published on Alternet about the battle to maintain an open Internet and proper access to it.
A battle is raging for control of the Internet and it is not taking place in Washington. Scores of cities, fed up with the recalcitrance and outright arrogance of their providers and Washington’s lack of action are taking their information future into their own hands by building their own high-speed networks. To Harold DePriest, head of Chattanooga’s municipally owned fiber network, currently the largest in the country, the issue is clear: “Does our community control our own fate or does someone else control it?”
He who owns the information highways makes the rules of the road. Today those rules are made by a handful of global corporations with little public oversight.
Photo used under Creative Commons License - Courtesy, Baldinger

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