Thursday, June 9, 2005

GOP says local WiFi is "unfair competition"

Courtesy of DailyKos comes the news that a GOP rep from Texas has introduced the laughably named Preserving Innovation in Telecom Act of 2005:

[T]he bill prohibits state and local governments from providing any telecommunications or information service that is "substantially similar" to services provided by private companies.


The point of the proposal, of course, has nothing to do with "preserving innovation." It's to stop cities like Portland from providing a WiFi blanket of wireless Internet broadband access to its citizens and businesses--in the name of preventing "unfair competition" with giants like Comcast.(Next, we can imagine that the bottlers of Evian water will be claiming that it's unfair competition for Portland to provide water to its citizens' homes.)

Similar stop-local-WiFi legislation has been introduced in several states, so far with no results. This is the first attempt by the GOP/corporate combine to bring the fight to the national level.

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