Quick local angle —remember the Greensboro City Council weighed in on muni-broadband legislation last year.
Now down I-85 to Salisbury, where the city is lending millions of dollars from its water-sewer fund to prop up its municipal broadband system.
Fibrant’s loans will total $7 million, and they expect to repay those loans once “subscriber revenues catch up to expenditures.” What’s the likelihood that will ever happen?
This is the essential problem with muni-broadband —it doesn’t make any money, so cities are forced to pull funds from other utilities —in Wilson’s case the city was forced to pull more than $11 million from its electric and gas funds to subsidize its Greenlight public cable company.
Update: Salisbury interim City Manager Doug Paris tells me “loans from the start-up phase of the utility are from the capital reserve fund, not the water and sewer fund.”
