Community Broadband Media Roundup - May 30

Idaho

Idaho Falls exploring options to provide fiber optic connections to homes by KIDK-3 TV

The city’s current fiber infrastructure has not only improved operational efficiencies for the city and its utilities, but it has also facilitated economic development, competitive internet service rates and helped maintain city rights-of-way.

Ammon moves to create fiber optic district by KIDK-3 TV

Maryland

How fiber broadband factors into this Maryland town's future by Stephen Babcock, Technical.ly Baltimore

Minnesota

Session implodes at midnight over roads, public works by J. Patrick Coolican, Minneapolis Star Tribune

The spending agreement included new spending on key Dayton priorities: $35 million on rural broadband Internet development, $35 million on closing economic disparities for people of color with another $17.5 million every year going forward, and $25 million on prekindergarten access, with $55 million every year thereafter to help disadvantaged children get ready for school. Dayton had sought much larger amounts for all of these initiatives.

Missouri

Politicians fail in bid to squash municipal broadband in Missouri by Jon Brodkin, ArsTechnica

Missouri's attempted municipal broadband ban fails by Fierce Telecom

Virginia

The questions Roanoke County should be asking about broadband by Roanoke Times Editorial Board

The latest example is the survey that the Virginia Cable Telecommunications Association had conducted to see how Roanoke County residents feel about the proposal for the county to spend $3.4 million to build a 25-mile network of broadband fiber through the Roanoke Valley Broadband Authority (which already has a 47-mile network in Roanoke and Salem).

Except that’s not exactly how the questions were framed. Not surprisingly, they were framed in a way to produce exactly the results the cable industry wanted — and got. The results purport to show that county residents don’t think much of the idea. Of course they don’t.

Not when the question is framed like this: “The County government should use taxpayer dollars to compete with businesses in the private sector — Do you Strongly Agree, Agree, Disagree or Strongly Disagree?”

General

Cable lobby asks FCC for more time to argue business broadband rules by Giuseppe Macri, Inside Sources

How good is US internet access? That's a matter of some debate by Mario Trujillo, The Hill

Dozens of cities are running their own municipal broadband services that offer super-fast speeds. The federal government has also helped with this effort. The FCC recently preempted a pair of state laws in North Carolina and Tennessee so that cities there could expand the service outside their borders. 

Cable lobby says FCC launched assault on industry "without provocation" by Jon Brodkin, ArsTechnica

Powell also complained that the cable industry has been "marked for rate regulation." While the FCC doesn't impose utility-style rate regulation on home Internet or TV service, the FCC has proposed new price rules that affect certain types of business data services offered by cable companies. On the other hand, the commission is helping cable TV providers avoid rate regulation at the municipal level.

Wheeler argues that consumers have been harmed by the lack of competition in the set-top box market, as 99 percent of customers still rent cable boxes directly from their providers and generally pay a high price. He has also pointed to customer harm to support other initiatives. For example, a lack of competition that drives up prices and restricts Internet access was cited to support an order that overturned municipal broadband restrictions that help cable companies avoid competition.

GOP budget bill would kill net neutrality and FCC's set-top box plan by Jon Brodkin, ArsTechnica