In North Carolina, Elected Officials are owned by the Telecoms

The next time that you wonder why your Telephone Bill or Cable Bill keeps rising and yet the technology isn't moving forward and you can't get the service you desire, then go look at your elected representatives in Raleigh and on the local level. Look at the Republicans who talk about how competition will solve all economic ills, but don't practice what they preach!. The problem is that they want to qualify who is to compete and who isn't worthy. They want to decide who is allowed to compete against whom. They want to protect their buddies who pad their pockets with campaign contributions and various other perks. If you have a better way of providing technology and service you will have to go through your elected representatives first.

Great Article in the Raleigh News and Observer on Friday May 20th that lays it all out in black and white. Every community in this state is facing this issue of representatives stuck in the stone age when it comes to technology and who haven't a clue that they are holding our State back, because this is an infrastructure and economic development issue and when has this State put that at its forefront?

In the article, Perdue criticizes, but won't veto, municipal broadband limits, our Obama coat tail ridin', down home Gubna Bev, "criticized a bill that restricts municipalities from building and operating broadband Internet systems, but said she would not use her veto power to block it." This bill was pushed through from our State sanctioned Cable and Telephone monopolies. The Governor wants her cake and to eat it too.

As the article states:

The governor said there is a need to establish rules to prevent cities and towns from having unfair advantage over private companies. But she said she was concerned that the bill would decrease the number of choices available to consumers.

The bill would require towns and cities that set up broadband systems to hold public hearings, financially separate their operations from the rest of government operations, and bar from them offering below cost services. They also couldn't borrow money for the project without voter approval in a referendum.

The five cities now offer the service – Wilson, Salisbury, Morganton, Davidson, and Mooresville – would be largely exempt.

At least some of the communities in this state had leadership with enough brainpower to understand that there needs to be checks and balances placed on these telecommunications companies. It is not competition, just because they are crossing over on some services. I have Directv and the bill went up 4 years ago when these same forces cried that I wasn't paying my fair share of taxes to level the North Carolina Government mafia field. I think that is BS, since I'm not using publiv infrastructure to receive my signal.

Look what the beloved slush fund giants Time-Warner has done to buy off our elected officials and god knows who else in this state, because they don't want to upgrade broadband technology at more than their chosen pace of a snail:

Time-Warner Cable, which has been pushing for the legislation since 2005, has argued that it ought not to face competition from tax-paid sources.

Time-Warner's political action committee has contributed at least $214,000 to state candidates since 2008, most of them state legislative candidates, according to state campaign finance records.

It contributed $3,000 to Perdue's gubernatorial campaign in 2008. Time-Warner also contributed $10,000 to the Democratic Governor's Association fund raising event that Perdue hosted last April at the Umstead Hotel.

And I'm sure that Charter has been playing this game too.

Look at this article that shows that North Carolina has 7 of the top 10 worst cities in the United States as far as cost of Megabits per Second of Broadband Download speed. these numbers show that the citizens of this state are getting gouged because of the relationship between these Telecom Providers and our so-called representatives. In North Carolina, we can see who they represent. when we are paying 5 to 10 times what other communities are paying for data communications:

Bandwidth.com Launches a Better Broadband Map

Can't you see that this is outrageous and this is a very important issue that we can't continue to keep falling behind on. We are supposed to be trying to move this area and this State forward in a new economy that requires expanded information capacities that can help in creative processes, instead we have a bunch of elected officials that don't have a clue about what this means to our economic development.

First of all they are out and out getting bought off as the Time-Warner numbers above plainly show and secondly this Don Quixote pseudologic about Private Business competing against Government is laughably ludicrous. These are out-and-out monopolies for gosh sake. I think it shows once again that the politicians will do all that they can to protect cronies over the interest of the public they always fail to represent. This is an issue worthy of going to the mat to get these people out of office over.

Mark Hilton, Mark Hollo, and Mitchell Setzer voted to keep Catawba County in the Stone ages when it comes to broadband services by helping to approve this bill to stifle competition and maintain the status quo for the local telecom companies in our area. Where is the incentive for these companies to improve their service? Where is the competition? The above numbers don't lie folks. We are paying cable bills, phone bills, and data communication bills at a higher rate than most of the nation, because our representation is not looking out for our interests. They give us no alternative. If you want the internet, then you pay the price, There will be no competition!!!