Raleigh City Council adopts resolution against limiting municipal broadband

Yesterday, Raleigh City Council passed a resolution opposing legislation under consideration by the North Carolina General Assembly that would limit or eliminate local governments’ ability to provide high-speed Internet and other broadband services to their citizens. The proposed legislation, House Bill 129 and Senate Bill 87, are known as Level Playing Field/Local Government Competition.

The City  Council resolution, introduced by Council Member Bonner Gaylord, says that passage of HB129/SB87 would keep “local governments from providing needed communications services, especially advanced high-speed broadband,” and deny “local governments the availability of federal grants under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to assist in providing affordable access to high-capacity broadband service in unserved and underserved areas.”

The resolution also noted that several NC municipalities, including Wilson, Salisbury, Morganton, Laurinburg and Davidson, already offer high-speed Internet in response to private provider’s unwillingness or inability to provide Broadband service “to serve the public and promote economic development in their respective areas.”

Raleigh itself has free outdoor wireless Internet in the downtown/Fayetteville Street area.

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About Mark Milliman

Mark Milliman is a Principal Consultant at Inphotonics Research driving the adoption and assisting local governments to plan, build, operate, and lease access open-access municipal broadband networks. Additionally, he works with entrepreneurs and venture capitalists to increase the value of their intellectual capital through the creation of strategic product plans and execution of innovative marketing strategies. With more than 22 years of experience in the telecommunications industry that began at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Mark has built fiber, cable, and wireless networks around the world to deliver voice, video, and data services. His thorough knowledge of all aspects of service delivery from content creation to the design, operation, and management of the network is utilized by carriers and equipment manufacturers. Mark conceived and developed one of the industry's first multi-service provisioning platform and is multiple patent holder. He is active in the IEEE as a senior member. Mark received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Iowa State University and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.
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