Free Republic

ANNAPOLIS (AP) — A $10 million plan to bring less-expensive high-speed Internet access to rural parts of Maryland is on hold because of a bureaucratic dispute that critics say is a case of red tape getting in the way of progress. State lawmakers voted two years ago to set aside the money to build a "spine" of fiber-optic cable in three rural regions of the state — Southern Maryland, the Eastern Shore and Western Maryland — where Internet-service providers don't always provide high-speed access. At the time, supporters said the Maryland Broadband Cooperative would bring big-city Internet access to underserved...