Protection for municipal Wi-Fi approved in Senate Committee
According to this article on CNET, part of the giant Communications, Consumer's Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act approved by the Senate Commerce Committee yesterday with a 15-7 vote includes provisions that would prevent states from enacting laws that would prevent municipalities from selling their own broadband service.
As the article says: states including Florida, Texas, Virginia and Pennsylvania have enacted laws intended to curb those projects (like municipal Wi-Fi), measures that are often backed by companies like Verizon and Comcast.
Municipal broadband, especially wireless, should be of interest to Net Neutrality proponents. In areas serviced by a fiber provider the only real foreseeable competition for the fiber ISP would be municipal Wi-FI. The telcos know this; that is why they have fought so hard for state laws banning towns from building muni-Wi-Fis. Access Tiering plans can only work if the ISPs do not have real competition.
In a town served by a fiber provider and a muni-wireless consumers would have a real choice of ISPs. In that kind of environment it is hard to see either ISP cordoning off portions of their bandwidth for third party use. In other words the competition would help protect Net Neutrality.
That is one of the reasons I am following the progress made by Summit NJ on their muni-WiFi project. It is also one of the reason why I want Red Bank to ask Verizon how they would react to a Red Bank muni-wifi.
