Bill targets public broadband

Bill targets public broadband

From the article:

A bill limiting Internet offerings by government entities is back for legislative consideration, and city officials said Friday they were working to keep the measure from affecting publicly provided broadband services.

"We are collectively looking at that issue and hoping we can sit down as a group and say ... 'Guys, can we find a place where we can agree?'" said Gary Brinkworth, Tallahassee's utility director and a driving force in the city's wireless Internet canopy.

The bill would stop local governments already in the communications business from acquiring new customers until certain steps had been taken.

It would bar cities such as Tallahassee, Quincy, Gainesville and seven other cities in Florida from acquiring new customers for existing systems and make any other city go through a lengthy review process before it could start broadband or Internet service.

Government can provide wireless service to citizens far less expensively than corporations can. But government is being banned from doing so in many states by tiny group of large corporations that want to keep prices high. This is the concentration of wealth at work.