Cable Lobbying Group Files Suit Against EPB to Stop Fiber To The Home

This is, the EPB can't show that they're not using power consumer money, because that's exactly what they're doing. The network they'd be using has already been installed, and is paid for by power customers. Adding extra functionality to their services is subsidization defined.

Furthermore, this isn't something that local corruption can fix. The TCTA is the mouthpiece for your local cable providers, particularly Comcast and Time Warner Cable, which collectively represent about $35 billion in annual revenue. They don't particularly care about whether or not EPB is able to introduce BPL in Chattanooga. They do care about establishing a precedent wherein local municipalities are able to piggyback telecommunications services on existing utilities, infringing upon their local statutory monopolies.

It is probably going to take a legislative change for this project to go forward, and even that will be challenged in court. The cable companies can argue estoppel, i.e. they relied on the promise of a monopoly in building their infrastructure, and should be allowed to reap the benefits of their investment. The court will have to see a huge disservice to the public interest to defeat this, and I don't think that better broadband is really something the courts tend to care about all that much. More's the pity.

The US invented the internet. Today the US isn't even in the top 10 in broadband adoption, availability, speed, or cost. We pay much more for far less than people in many other nations. This isn't the first time cable and telco's have put up roadblocks to progress in the US.

Read the OECD Broadband Statistics.
www.oecd.org/sti/ict/broadband

This happens every time a particular industry is given a local monopoly to get it started. I'm doing research on the origins of copyright, and this is exactly the same thing that the English Stationers' Company got in the 1550s, and it wasn't until 1774 that they were finally broken. 220 years seems far too long a time to wait for competent broadband.

Cable, phone, & cell companies have beeen fighting muninciple wi-fi efforts across the country. Going so far as to lobby states to ban cities from setting up wi-fi. I say let cities lay fiber and sell access to all the cable & phone companies and let the best service win.