Ministry of Innovation / Business of Technology

“It’s dead”: Kansas municipal Internet ban was “stabbed, shot, and hanged”

Cable lobby rebuffed in attempt to ban public broadband networks.

Ding dong, the wicked broadband witch is dead.

The Kansas cable lobby's attempt to ban nearly all municipal broadband networks won't be rising from the dead any time soon.

Last month, the Kansas Cable Telecommunications Association (KCTA), whose members include Comcast, Cox, Eagle Communications, and Time Warner Cable, proposed a ban on telecommunications, video, and broadband services offered to residents and businesses by municipalities. The bill would also have made it illegal for cities and towns to buy, build, lease, maintain, or operate any facility that helps a private business offer telecommunications, video, or broadband services.

One exception allowed municipal networks in "unserved areas," but the bill defined those areas in such a way that none may exist. The bill also had an exception for services provided in municipal buildings. After extensive criticism, the KCTA said it would "tweak" the language in the bill to redefine unserved areas.

Now, though, one of the bill's main opponents is declaring it dead.

"We stabbed it and shot it and hanged it and dissolved it in hydrofluoric acid, and flushed it down the toilet. It's dead," Joshua Montgomery, who runs a small ISP in Lawrence, KS, told Ars.

Montgomery and other opponents of the bill are still sending letters to legislators every day. Between the negative press for the proposed broadband ban and a separate bill to legalize discrimination against gay people, Montgomery thinks Kansas legislators are in no mood to pursue anything controversial for now.

"We are on top of it. We are not going to let it come back up," he said. "I think we did really kill the entire issue for at least a year."

The broadband bill had been scheduled for a Senate committee hearing, but that was canceled. Kansas Sen. Oletha Faust-Goudeau (D) told Montgomery in an e-mail that the bill "has lost its momentum at this time."

When asked if the KCTA plans to submit a revised version of the bill, KCTA President John Federico told Ars this week, "at this time it is highly unlikely that we will be pursing legislation this Legislative Session."

Kansas cities lack adequate broadband

Kansas Budget Director Jon Hummell submitted a financial note on the bill that summarizes some of the opposition's arguments:

The League of Kansas Municipalities indicates that passage of SB 304 would have a significant fiscal effect on the cities in Kansas. The League states that many Kansas cities do not presently have adequate broadband service to meet their own needs or the needs of local businesses and industry. A city may choose to proceed on its own to establish the needed infrastructure and provide the service to the community where existing private businesses do not provide it. The League contends that passage of SB 304 could cause the loss of economic development opportunities, which would include additional jobs and increased assessed valuation of property. In addition, the League notes that an unintended consequence of the act would be that cities would be precluded from leasing space on water towers and other similar aerial structures for use by telecommunications and cable industry. These lease fees can generate thousands of dollars per year for the cities which would be lost under the provisions of the act.

The Kansas Association of Counties is unable to estimate what the long-term fiscal effect of passage of SB 304 would be. However, the Association expresses concern that because the bill would revoke local authority to build networks, as well as prohibit municipalities from entering into public-private partnerships, rural locations could be unable to attract modern businesses if the private sector failed to develop an adequate network infrastructure.

ISP lobbies have claimed municipal networks would siphon away taxpayer dollars. But Christopher Mitchell, director of the Telecommunications as Commons Initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, has pointed out that "most networks sell bonds to private investors who are repaid by revenues from the network." It's more common for a municipal broadband service to subsidize other government services than it is to cost taxpayers money, he said.

The Kansas bill's stated goal was to "encourage the development and widespread use of technological advances in providing video, telecommunications and broadband services at competitive rates," even though it would actually protect private ISPs from competition.

Montgomery would like to see a bill that encourages municipalities to build out fiber networks and provide wholesale access to ISPs. "Retailers, guys like me and Comcast and Time Warner and AT&T and anybody who wants to play, would be able to use that wholesale fiber to provide services within the community," he said.

Montgomery said that he drew up language for such a bill and has meetings scheduled with state senators, but he doesn't expect anything to come of it. "A mechanism that basically bans municipalities from being retailers but encourages them to be wholesalers would address a lot of the issues the cable companies are concerned about and still benefit the community," Montgomery said. "That's the pitch I'm going to make. Probably no one is going to listen to me, but I'm going to make it."

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126 Reader Comments

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  1. Yeah, I'm just laying it out in a neutral way in case there's a chance of getting through. It cost zero effort on my part to do so.
    11823 posts | registered
  2. bburdge wrote:
    No one so far seems to grasp what property rights are and why the 'If you don't like it go build your own country', simply doesn't work, aside from being an intellectually lazy statement.

    You could put in the barest effort to explain these things instead of just berating anybody who disagrees with you. If you don't, you're leaving readers to take away the message that you really don't have anything to back up your claims. They're more likely to go with the explanation that has been backed up with evidence and reasonable explanations. In this case, that's the people you're arguing against. Why? Because you haven't given any counterargument.

    Let's be clear, this is the "libertarian" that is an embarrassment.

    As a [self-described] liberal libertarian, THIS! So very much this, it is poisoning of the label. He's pretty the personification of why Ayn Rand considered the US Libertarian movement a pack of children (I mean besides Rand's propensity to loath and look down on pretty much everyone ;) ).

    Further discussion with them is akin to poking a barking dog with a stick.

    Guilty pleasure. *blush*
    3690 posts | registered
  3. Montaire wrote:
    Much like hydrofluoric acid, this victory is weak

    In the analogy used by the article, the fact that hydrofluoric acid is considered "weak" in the chemical sense doesn't detract from it's extreme corrosive power and toxicity to living tissue, and hopefully that part of the analogy will apply quite well to the cable cabal.
    26 posts | registered
  4. fgoodwin wrote:
    Fritzr wrote:
    fgoodwin wrote:
    Doesn't that apply only to common carriers and public accommodations? Since ISPs are not common carriers, arguably they can decide who they will do business with. But I could be mistaken as IANAL.

    The text includes any business that is involved in interstate transactions. Hotels letting rooms to out of state guests is how local hotels & motels got roped in. ISPs that offer interstate connections can easily find themselves subject to the various federal Civil Rights Acts by virtue of the connections they provide. The final decision is up to a judge though & you can count on lawyers fighting for the opinion that benefits their clients without regard to the facts until a court issues a binding decision one way or the other.

    I thought the DC Circuit overruled Net Neutrality on the very grounds that they were common carrier regulations that could be applied only to common carriers, of which ISPs are not?

    If you offer services that a federal agency defines as interstate, you are subject to all the interstate commerce laws, including non-discrimination. That part has nothing to do with common carrier status.

    Common Carrier status is a different set of rules that the FCC can invoke by simply issuing a new regulation defining ISPs as common carriers. That loophole has been in most of the news reports about the knockdown of net neutrality due to the FCC not declaring the ISPs to be common carriers first. FCC is currently saying they do not plan to define ISPs as common carriers, but they have been told by the court that they have the power to do so.
    3955 posts | registered
  5. Bengie25 wrote:
    The business has the right to create their own country and start a business there with whatever rules they want. As long as a member of the public is not doing something illegal, I'm pretty sure a business cannot choose not to service someone. At at least not in any metro area.

    I'm pretty sure that being a business is a privilege, not a right. While no one can force an individual to work, a business is not an individual and it must service the general public with in reason.

    I'm talking about a legally defined business, not some guy at a farmers market trying to sell stuff.

    IANAL, but I'm pretty sure on a federal level, businesses have he right to refuse service as long as the reasons are not related to age, religion, sexual preference, race, or gender. And states can add their own additional rules and regs on top of the federal rules and regs.
    4868 posts | registered
  6. Excellent. I live in Chanute, Kansas and the city is planning on installing FTTH. Big win for us. ATT can stick it.
    3 posts | registered
  7. This is so unfortunate. Many city-owned and operated networks have provided citizens with better connectivity at affordable rates. I know this is exactly what the big businesses want to prevent, but it really is unfortunate because affordable, reliable and fast Internet is so vital for all members of society.
    15 posts | registered
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