Obama calls for government-run broadband service

President Obama has called on cities and towns to create their own broadband service for their residents to compete with large corporations.

Obama was in Cedar Rapids, Iowa touting the plan to get states to relax their rules against municipalities setting up their own networks. Cedar Rapids got an exemption from the FCC to create their own networks a few years ago.

Republicans in Congress reacted immediately.

The Hill:

"In Tennessee we have a term to describe people like President Obama — tone-deaf,” Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) said in a statement.

“At a time when Americans think the biggest problem facing our nation today is big government, you would think he'd have gotten the message by now,” she added. “We don't need unelected bureaucrats like FCC [Federal Communications Commission] Chairman Tom Wheeler dictating to our states what they can and can't do with respect to protecting their limited taxpayer dollars and private enterprises.”

In 19 states, there are laws on the books limiting local governments from building out their own municipal Internet services.

The FCC has been asked by two cities — in North Carolina and in Tennessee — to override those laws. Obama on Wednesday urged the FCC to do just that.

“I’m on the side of competition,” Obama said during his speech at a Cedar Falls utility plant.

Supporters of the move say that it would help create more competition for broadband service, and many Democrats cheered Obama’s call. According to the FCC, more than half the country has just one option for high-speed broadband Internet service with download speeds of 25 Mbps or higher.

Critics, however, say that it would amount to Washington intervention in local laws.

Generally there is no competition there unless the phone company provides DSL

So far as broadband goes there is but one provider, the cable company. If the cable company is greedy there is no recourse but to use the monoply. The cities have no ability to set rates or mitigate poor service.

Then there is comcast..... Comcast is essentially the propaganda arm of the democrat party.

In nearby Bristol Virginia, to solve all the complains about the cable provider, the city went into the business. I don’t know details but am not aware of major complaints.

When the monoply cable providers get too uppity, they should be punished or put down

I know, I know too much government etc. But if no other cable provider is willing to come on a competitors turf, perhaps the city did the right thing. They have a poor service high cost monopolist and no willing competitor replaced by a municipal utility and it works

BTW, we ( and Bristol VA) have electricity provided by a similar municipal utility selling/distributing electricity provided by the Tennessee Valley Authority so it is not all developed from scratch, there is an experience factor with local corporate utility boards etc.

It will run at the speed of Net Zero dial up services and monitor every single packet of digital information that passes through your modern in real time so they will know when and where to send the brownshirts immediately if you disapprove of The King. Right wing sites will cease to exist and only websites that support the “state” will be permitted to exist.

Anonymous members are furious at this turn of events and are starting to use the term “constitutional rights” and have even made favorabe references to freedom of religion the last few months. Now whether they are just using those terms as a tool to get the job one or not I don’t know but I did get the distinct feeling that one of their members believes in God from the tone of his voice in one of their videos. They have been releasing videos like crazy the past few months. I listen to them because I know they are looking into places where normal men don’t or can’t tread. They have alluded to the fact that the economies of the world are currently propped up with only paper created collateral that doesn’t exist and that a crash is inevitable. I believe them in that regard. It’s coming...

ACtually, he was in Cedar FALLS, IA yesterday, not Cedar Rapids.

only reason I know that, is because I live here, and the idiot-in-chief visited my town yesterday.

traffic snarls, a fawning local media, and a bunch of idiot local college student knee padders combined to make it a perfectly nauseous day.

that said, there were some protests....I was not able to get pics, as I have to work to pay for his non-sense.

local municipality, where bozo visited, offers high speed internet to its customers...which I am one......but he used it as an example of how big.gov should step in.

the competition here...mediacomm, issued a statement to that effect....waste of resources to promote tax payer funded internet for all, etc.

bozo flew all the way here to talk for 40 minutes....talk about a waste of resources.....sheesh

Depending on the situation, municipality-owned utilities can work, especially in places that the big companies deem “uneconomic”. What I don’t like is when a city deems a utility or service a “natural monopoly” and grants a permit to only one company.

In this case, it would be better for the city to lay the cable, open up to competition, and then charge a cable fee, much like most places do with water or electricity.

Please check out post 56 that pretty well describes my point about Bristol Virginia

There are circumstances that prevent competition. One is that cable providers don’t want to compete head to head and string their wires and boxes on the same poles as their competitors. Cities generally allow only one cable provider

The same was true of telephone service. only one provider was permitted. That has been disrupted by cell phones that do not require the infrastructure of wired phones.

What is needed is high speed wireless internet for the masses

Yes Sir! This is leftist fascism writ large. A government controlled internet interface and “news” service, since the system of liberal newspapers and media are losing people and subscribers.

As always in the past the news was controlled by the progressives and libs and they are really trying to stake it down here. Total goverment controlled media you cannot differentiate the truth.

Facebook is a Govt. “partner” with intel, to get people to volunteer all kinds of data-— for no reason.

Want independent media, obamaumao? Let people pay for the info they get, so they know that it is not the shiite coming out of your lying piehole.

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