In addition to the other suggestions, it might be worth contacting your representative to voice your support of legislation to repeal the existing statewide ban. For instance, this bill was recently introduced in the state senate:
If your town / city is less than 10k people simply going to city council open forum meetings (most places host those monthly or quarterly, some even weekly) and constantly hounding representatives about it being a problem with a straightforward solution (taxpayer funded public telecom operation in the city).
Probably the #1 problem is the ignorance of how bad the telecom monopoly is in the US, that there even are alternatives, and that this is the problem domain government needs to approach in the same way they approach electric access or roads.
> Probably the #1 problem is the ignorance of how bad the telecom monopoly is in the US, that there even are alternatives, and that this is the problem domain government needs to approach in the same way they approach electric access or roads.
amusingly, boulder county, which passed this same thing, tried for years to get out of maintaining my neighborhood's roads. (and our electric service is privately provided.)
It sounds like they're working on it. I like that there are a number of test cases, which will hopefully lead to a little variety in results, and maybe some good ideas regarding which techniques are more effective than others. Like any municipal service, there will be the potential for it to run smoothly and efficiently, and there will be the potential for it to turn into a massive clusterfuck and money pit. Where a particular city's implementation falls on that spectrum will be determined by their own choices.
I'm in Colorado Springs (2nd largest city in Colorado) and we passed this last year although it didn't get any coverage. Colorado is definitely moving in the right direction.
peterjmag|8 years ago
https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/sb17-042
That particular bill ultimately failed, but it was on the right track.
zanny|8 years ago
Probably the #1 problem is the ignorance of how bad the telecom monopoly is in the US, that there even are alternatives, and that this is the problem domain government needs to approach in the same way they approach electric access or roads.
sigstoat|8 years ago
amusingly, boulder county, which passed this same thing, tried for years to get out of maintaining my neighborhood's roads. (and our electric service is privately provided.)
excalibur|8 years ago
kels|8 years ago