RALEIGH
Becky and Dale Carlson are relying on fast and cheap Internet access as they sell photos and online greeting cards in the home business they hope will carry them into retirement.
So Becky Carlson said she opposes a legislative proposal that would make it harder for cities and towns to build broadband Internet systems that compete with big telephone and cable companies and hold down rates.
"It's really important to a lot of small business, but especially us, because it's only online," said Becky Carlson of Apex, who runs Bluemoonistic Images. "Photography files are so huge. You can't send large files if you don't have fast Internet."
The N.C. Senate Finance Committee postponed consideration yesterday of a bill that would force municipalities to get voter approval before borrowing money to build a competing broadband network.
The legislation is the latest in a series of efforts by telecom corporations to keep local governments out of the broadband business.
"This is another iteration of the previous ones we have seen over the last three years that are designed to contain and cripple existing systems, and set the bar so high for new systems that it would be difficult for communities to move forward," said Doug Paris, an assistant to Salisbury's city manager. Salisbury has borrowed $30 million to build a fiber-optic network. It will begin testing the system in a few months.
The telecom companies are opposed by the politically influential N.C. League of Municipalities and corporate giants Google and Intel.
They argue that crimping municipal broadband could stifle economic growth in a wired age.
Mayor Allen Joines said that the legislation would not affect Winston-Salem. The city offers free wireless connection to the Internet along Fourth Street, but it doesn't have any plans to create a system such as the one planned for Salisbury.
Still, Joines said he was not in favor of the legislation.
"The local government really has the authority to do those things that their citizens need, that the private sector is not willing to do," Joines said.
Nor would the legislation affect WinstonNet, the nonprofit group that tried two years ago to set up free communitywide WiFi. The plan was put on hold last year when the company that WinstonNet was working with backed out.
Cable and phone companies have been urging the General Assembly to restrict municipal broadband services since a 2005 ruling by the N.C. Court of Appeals upheld the right of towns and cities to offer their residents broadband.
Companies argue that local governments have an unfair advantage because they don't have to pay taxes and can subsidize their rates, undercutting the corporate competitors.
The sponsor of the Senate bill, Sen. David Hoyle, said that tax-free government enterprises shouldn't be competing with business, but a compromise with municipalities is being negotiated.
Hoyle, D-Gaston, said that stopping local governments from adding broadband to the range of utility services may save municipalities from future losses.
"They're going to own a cable system that may become obsolete, and they're going to say to us (legislators), ‘Please save us,'" he said.
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