Wilson, NC to Time Warner: compete or die!

The city of Wilson, NC grew weary of waiting for Time Warner Cable to deploy reasonable priced, world class broadband. Their solution was to do their own overbuild and offer fiber to the home service. I comes as no surprise that  the TWC Evil Eye is protesting rather than building a competitive system.

IndyWeek has an interesting read on the North Carolina city of Wilson, which is providing all of its residents with fiber optic triple play services via a company named Greenlight. Greenlight offers symmetrical connections from 10Mbps ($34.95) up to 100Mbps ($299.95), something that obviously doesn’t make local competitor Time Warner Cable very happy. (Broadband Reports)

A city governent should be the competitor of last resort. Unfortunately, the cable and telco duopoly has lobbied long and hard for protected franchises and right of ways that may not be used by competitors. In many cases, the local municipality may be the only entity that can deploy last mile connectivity under these laws and rules.

It’s obvious that we need wholesale changes to laws governing right of way and franchising of fixed line services. Sadly, federal and most state governments are blissfully willing to do the duopoly’s bidding, keeping equal access to potential customers out of a competitors reach.