The Georgia Legislature’s bill on municipal telecom networks cleared committee,...
The Georgia Legislature’s bill on municipal telecom networks cleared committee, with some changes, Thursday. The Georgia House Energy, Utilities and Telecom Committee approved House Bill 282, which would restrict a municipality’s ability to create its own network, after some debate…
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and despite resistance from some community leaders in their state and beyond (CD Feb 21 p11). “It’s really a very straightforward bill,” Rep. Mark Hamilton (R) said Thursday: “We say that any public provider that wishes to offer broadband service has to meet several exemptions.” The initial bill said municipalities could only build if an area lacked sufficient broadband service, establishing a threshold of 1.5 Mbps in the faster direction, but an amended version (http://1.usa.gov/YOSCav) increased that threshold to 3 Mbps in the faster direction. Hamilton added that any entity that’s made infrastructure investments can continue to use their networks and described the process by which the Georgia Public Service Commission would have to determine if a region were unserved or underserved and whether a municipality could expand a network or build there. The amended bill would also make clear it “shall not include a municipal corporation, or any authority or instrumentality of a municipal corporation, that owns or operates an electric utility": “That area is completely exempt from this,” said Hamilton, one of the bill’s sponsors. “It was done in a way to protect the citizens.” He described the municipal telecom business as “high risk,” a cost to Georgia communities in the millions. “We applaud them and we thank them,” he said of the more than dozen municipalities with networks. “They got into the business when they very possibly didn’t have any alternatives. We're not trying to hurt anybody.” Hamilton framed the issue as one of free markets and job creation. “They're playing Monopoly, we're playing life,” Amy Henderson, a spokeswoman for the Georgia Municipal Association, told us. “Broadband is about economic development.”