Ed Cone passes along this N&O op-ed on North Carolina’s place at the bottom of the broadband barrel and how it hurts the state.
As you can probably imagine, the writers hold up the City of Wilson as the standard for public broadband (emphasis mine):
Because it is owned by the city, the Wilson network keeps its prices affordable. And because locals now have a choice, Time Warner Cable priced its services more competitively in Wilson than in nearby towns without meaningful competition.
And who owns the city? You guessed it— taxpayers, which means Wilson’s affordable prices are artificial. And –irony upon irony — of all people my buddy makes the same case about public broadband that the evil John Locke Foundation makes— that cities like Wilson and Salisbury are investing public money in technology that could be obsolete before it’s paid for.
