[TriLUG] OT: URGENT: H.129 to be heard in Thursday's Finance Committee!

[Mark Turner]

We in the Triangle are blessed with multiple options for Internet 
service, but not all communities are as fortunate as we are.

But what if no one wants to "spend on the infrastructure" to provide it? 
What if you're like many of our Pittsboro members who can't get 
high-speed Internet where they live, simply because the commercial 
providers can't make the business case? How are those people's kids 
going to do their homework and complete their papers if they don't have 
high-speed Internet available? There are hundreds of thousands of other 
kids in that same boat: living in areas too rural to turn the heads of 
the cable companies.

Cable companies have worked to legally define "high-speed Internet" as 
768k down. Thus, their bar for allowing a community to provide their own 
Internet service means that community must not be able to get at least 
768k Internet.

Most of y'all would laugh hysterically at calling 768k "high speed." 
Come on, you know you would.

Bits are getting cheaper every day. TWC reported it's bandwidth costs 
have actually DECREASED at the time it also said its traffic has 
increased. I'd venture to guess that good amount of their customer 
traffic never even leaves their network, costing them nothing.

I appreciate your opposition to the bill, Chris, but please don't 
believe the shell game that commercial providers are trying to play. One 
thing about municipal providers is that they are forced to be honest and 
open: something that's proved lacking with certain cable companies.

Cheers,
Mark

On 03/14/2011 08:08 PM, Chris Merrill wrote:
> On 3/14/2011 6:01 PM, Cristóbal Palmer wrote:
>> On Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 3:33 PM, Chris Merrill<chris at webperformance.com>  wrote:
>>> I dunno, looking at the pricing, it looks very fair to me. It is not a cap,
>>> it is tiered pricing. If you use more, you pay more...just like electricity,
>>> water, food, gas.  What am I missing?