On February 13, KKFI Community Radio from Kansas City, Missouri, interviewed ILSR’s Chris Mitchell and Todd O’Boyle from Common Cause. Tom Klammer, host of the “Tell Somebody” show covered Kansas legislation SB 304 aimed at preventing municipalities from investing in their own broadband networks.
Chris and Todd co-authored our 2013 case study, The Empire Lobbies Back: How National Cable and DSL Companies Banned The Competition in North Carolina. They reviewed the events in Wilson, North Carolina, home of municipal network Greenlight. As in Kansas, powerful cable company lobbyists attacked municipal networks in North Carolina through the state legislature.
Klammer writes on the program website:
Recently Todd O’Boyle of Common Cause brought my attention to a Kansas Senate bill, authored by a cable industry lobbyist, which would outlaw community broadband in Kansas. Subsequently I came across an article online written by O’Boyle’s colleague Christopher Mitchell who wrote that the bill in question, if passed, would create some of the most draconian limits on building networks that we have seen in any state.
You can listen to the interview from the program website. The interview is a little under one hour.