Muni Broadband Limits Fail in Missouri
Community broadband supporters rejoiced after the Missouri General Assembly stripped municipal broadband restrictions from an unrelated traffic citations bill before passing SB-765 late last week. A House amendment to SB-765, removed in a conference between the House and Senate before…
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final passage, would have prohibited local governments from providing a communications service that competes with one or more service providers in the jurisdiction. CenturyLink and AT&T had supported the plan, but it was opposed by a coalition of community broadband supporters including Google, NATOA, Netflix and the Telecommunications Industry Association. “This was one of the toughest state battles that we’ve fought in years,” said Jim Baller, attorney for the joint opposition. “It took months of constant vigilance, quick and effective reactions to ever-changing language, and hard daily work with key members of the legislature. The most important part was getting across the message that this is not a matter of the public sector competing with the private sector, but of communities retaining the ability to work with willing incumbents, create public-private partnerships, develop their own networks, or do whatever else they believe necessary to acquire affordable access to the advanced broadband networks on which their futures will depend.” State Rep. Lyndall Fraker, who proposed the muni broadband limits in his bill HB-2078, has no “future plans for this bill at this time,” the Republican told us in a Facebook message. “We will just keep monitoring the audits from the state auditors office concerning the cross [subsidization] of municipal utilities.”