Citizens in North Carolina’s cities, Wilson and Salisbury, who showed support for project Greenlight have gotten even more good news recently. The North Carolina senate bill that was part of the so-called “Level the Playing Field” legislation that was suppose to be voted on was sent to committee in a similar fashion to that of similar legislation in the House.
The blogger that can easily be creditted for bringing us a large quantity of the developments in the case of Time Warner Cable and Embarq verses Greenlight Inc. is now noting that the senate bill, SB 1004 was sent to committee in a very similar fashion to that of it’s House bill counterpart, SB 2052 in less than 24 hours.
“The Revenue Committee has a reputation for taking a good look at bills that come its way. Assuming everyone is invited to the table,” Brian writes, “they should get an understanding of how important next-generation broadband is to our state’s future.”
He continues, “Historically speaking, they’ll start looking at it sometime this September and have a report prepared about a year from now. Meanwhile, North Carolinians and people all over the country will continue to see more and more how important true high speed is to our economic development. The landscape has changed in a good way over the past couple of years and it will continue to change while they do this study.”
He then, again, thanked all the people who supported the movement.
In essence, this does mean that Greenlight Inc. is going to live for a while at the absolute very least. The debate around this, though, has fuelled some debate along traditional lines in Americans. That being whether or not a government should set up a company and introduce it into a marketplace. Some say that market forces should be left alone without government intervention while others look at the ISP situation and say that hey, the ISPs in an untampered with market have failed their customers and it’s time to be allowed to take action. In essence, it can be seen as a liberal stance versus a conservative stance, but of course, that’s over-simplifying the debate given that there’s a lot of practicalities that such a viewpoint does not address such as the quality of service being provided in this case for one.
Still, for the most part, it’s a huge victory for those who have been trying to get a local ISP in the area. No doubt this latest development is another huge blow to the incumbent ISPs in the area given how hard they fought for these bills.
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It is true that we Americans have divided into interesting – and definitely rigid – camps on the debate over municipal networks. My recent blog post inspired by the Wilson showdown, though, shows that municipal ownership of networks is indeed very pro-business – http://mediabriefing.wordpress.com