Telecom Bill coming up for vote soon in state leg
Apparently my employer doesn’t understand the term “live to blog”, so I’ve been doing a lot of this thing called “work” recently. Fortunately the folks at The Albany Project are all over this Telecom Bill thang. From lipris:
 I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not terribly literate in telecom issues, but I’ve been talking lately to folks who certainly are. Topic #1 these days is Assemblyman Brodsky’s Telecommunications bill. It has been described to me by more than one person as the “gold standard” in state telecom legislation. Oddly, very few people seem to be paying much attention to it, including the Governor.
Pete Sikora at TAP gives a brief overview:
Here’s why: the economy, education, civic participation, medical care, emergency services… more and more, it’s all about high speed internet service.
If some can get that service - and others can’t - then society will have built another wall to divide us from one another.Â
Because, you know, that’s just what we need– a more divided society.
The FCC requires universal service for basic telephone service - and there is lifeline telephone service for poor people. The power company gets you juice everywhere. But the development of high speed internet is being left to the tender mercies of the “free” market.
The U.S. is already way behind other advanced nations - and we’re dropping fast. NYS needs a comprehensive telecom policy that is pro-consumer and pro-worker. That’s exactly what Assemblymember Brodsky and Senator Leibell have introduced in A.3980B/S.5124.
On Wednesday, it passed out of committee on a “slam dunk” vote that wasn’t even close. I’ll find out if there’s any way we can help with our Rochester-area state reps.
This has a similar feel to what we’re trying to push with Rochester-wide wifi.
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Well, simply having rochester-wide wifi is not neccessarily a good idea. What we need is for it to be done right.
Realistically, the wireless will be provided by a company, unless Rochester has the vision to provide the service itself.
However, we need to lay down some ground rules. The wifi providing company will probably lay down some data pipes. It should be clear that we are paying for this infrastructure, and it is renting, rather than buying, the right to use wifi.
We should not give exclusive contracts to wifi-granting companys.
We should definitely put a cap on the maximum price people will pay for wifi.
There’s lots of other stuff. Point is, just implementing city-wide wifi could do harm rather than good, if done for the interest of giving a monopoly to the wifi provider. We need smart wifi.
To make myself clear, the Telecom Bill is the best thing since sliced bread.
The proposed city-wide wifi program that the County is probably going to implement isn’t too great, however.