The FCC should grant petitions from Wilson, North...
The FCC should grant petitions from Wilson, North Carolina, and the Electric Power Board of Chattanooga, Tennessee, to pre-empt state anti-muni broadband laws, said Davidson, North Carolina, and the SouthEast Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors (SEATOA) in separate comments…
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posted in dockets 14-115 and 14-116 Wednesday. “Numerous plans” were in the works by North Carolina communities to build fiber networks for retail business and residential use, Davidson said (http://bit.ly/1rAlVhS). It said they “ground to a halt” with the passage of a North Carolina law that created “numerous and varied restrictions” that “effectively prohibit local communities from deploying modern broadband networks and services to their citizens.” The law was a “major reason a collaborative effort by the towns of Cornelius, Davidson, Huntersville, Mooresville and Troutman and Mecklenburg County” ended with three of the entities dropping out, Davidson said. Calling the two laws “artificial state barriers to broadband infrastructure investment, deployment, competition, and innovation,” SEATOA, a chapter of NATOA, said (http://bit.ly/1AUAihQ) that pre-emption would “enable more communities to be self-reliant, and better enable America to maximize all resources so that no one is left behind and unable to participate in knowledge-based global opportunities for business, education, healthcare, security and quality of life."