This is episode 303(!) of our Community Broadband Bits podcast! Community Broadband Bits is a short weekly podcast featuring interviews with people building community networks or otherwise involved with Internet policy.
We’re a little off kilter these days when it comes to state legislation. Typically, we spend our efforts helping local communities stave off bills to steal, limit, or hamstring local telecommunications authority. This year it’s different so Christopher and Lisa sat down to have a brief chat about some of the notable state actions that have been taken up at state Capitols.
We decided to cover a few proposals that we feel degrade the progress some states have made, bills that include positive and negative provisions, and legislation that we think will do nothing but good. Our analysis covers the map from the states in New England to states in the Northwest.
In addition to small changes that we think will have big impact – like the definition of “broadband” — we discuss the way tones are shifting. In a few places, like Colorado, state leaders are fed up with inaction or obstruction from the big ISPs that use the law to solidify their monopoly power rather than bring high-quality connectivity to citizens. Other states, like New Hampshire and Washington, recognize that local communities have the ability to improve their situation and are taking measured steps to reduce barriers to broadband deployment.
While they still maintain significant power in many places, national corporate ISPs may slowly be losing their grip over state legislators. We talk about that, too.
For more on these and other bills, check out our recent stories on state and federal legislation.
This show is 24 minutes long and can be played on this page or via iTunes or the tool of your choice using this feed. You can download this mp3 file directly from here. Listen to other episodes here or view all episodes in our index. Thanks to Arne Huseby for the music. The song is Warm Duck Shuffle and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.
Photo Credit: marchinileo0 via Pixabay (CC0).
This article was originally published on ILSR’s MuniNetworks.org. Read the original here.
