McCain, Lautenberg introduce bill to allow muni WiFi nets
We're not about to turn into Daily Kos or anything here, but we really do have to give a big shout out to Senators Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) and John McCain (R-AZ), the latter being one of the few members of the majority party (and increasingly, either party) willing to take on big business (now you know we're not turning into dKos; they'd never do a shout out to any Republican). In his latest tilt at windmills, McCain, with Lautenberg's help, has authored the Community Broadband Act of 2005 (S. 1294), which would amend the Telecommunications Act of 1996 to allow cities and towns to operate their own broadband networks. "Many of the countries outpacing the United States in the deployment of high speed Internet services, including Canada, Japan and South Korea, have successfully combined municipal systems with privately deployed networks to wire their countries," McCain said. This, of course, flies in the face of legislation from other Republicans, including Texas Rep. Pete Sessions (a former SBC exec) and Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who are working to ban municipal WiFi networks altogether.
[Via the Wireless Weblog]
