Philly's WiFi Battle, Continued
by Joe Pulcinella
Seems that a little while back, Fast Eddie Renfell signed PA Bil 30 (good luck trying to muddle through it), essentially restricting "poltical subdivisions" (formerly called "cities") from forcing half-baked, hair-brained and obscenely expensive public (read: government) wireless broadband service to the masses.
Lots of folks are visibly upset including Media Tank who thinks it knows better how to spend my money.
PA House Bill 30 would eliminate the potential for communities like Philadelphia to self-determine how to meet their communication needs.
HB 30 is being fast-tracked by corporate giants like Verizon. It contains a provision that would prevent Philadelphia or any municipal entity in the state from offering a service that competes with corporate providers of internet service.
There you have it. People are not self-determined at the individual level; just at some arbitrary political level. They do have a point, though, but it's buried way beneath their own self-serving mission statement. True, Verizon put lots of weigh behind this one but only because it probably plans on using the full power of the Commonwealth of PA to install what it thinks we should all have as far as Soviet-style Internet access goes.