Amy Goodman
@DemocracyNow·3.2M subscribers·19.4K videos
Municipal Broadband Networks Bridge the Digital Divide As TeleComm Industry Tries To Block Them
Posted
March 4, 2013
Views
3,028
Likes
110
Comments
17
Engagement
March 4, 2013
3,028
110
17
4.19%
Every word spoken in this episode is indexed. Type any phrase to jump straight to the moment it was said.
Type any word or phrase that may have been spoken. Click a result to seek the player to that exact moment.
Try a name, a topic, or a quoted line
11:31Now PlayingAs many as one in 10 Americans cannot get internet connections fast enough for common online activities, such as watching video. Many communities have responded to this "digital divide" by creating their own municipal broadband networks as an alternative to the slow services offered by cable and telephone companies in order to gain equal access to education, healthcare, and even jobs. One example of success is a Thomasville, Georgia, which has been connecting people for more than a decade. But these efforts could soon be blocked. Some 19 states have passed laws to stop these communities from making such investments, and Georgia could be next. We are joined by Chris Mitchell, director of the Telecommunications as Commons Initiative at the Institute for Local SelfReliance. He recently coauthored a report, "The Empire Lobbies BackHow National Cable and DSL Companies Banned The Competition in North Carolina." Catharine Rice is the president of the SouthEast Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors, which represents Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. She led the effort to block an industrysponsored on municipal broadband investment in North Carolina, which passed last year after Republicans came to power in the state, including a longtime friend of the Koch brothers, Art Pope, who is now the governor's budget director.
To watch the entire weekday independent news hour, read the transcript, download the podcast, search our vast archive, or to find more information about Democracy Now! and Amy Goodman, visit
Democracy Now!, an independent global news hour that airs weekdays on 1,100+ TV and radio stations Monday through Friday.
FOLLOW DEMOCRACY NOW! ONLINE:
Twitter: @democracynow
Subscribe on YouTube
Listen on SoundCloud
Daily Email News Digest
Please consider supporting independent media by making a donation to Democracy Now! today, visit
Sentinel Indexing in Progress
Metadata and chapters are available. Claim extraction for this episode is pending.
All video content is delivered via YouTube embedded players in accordance with the YouTube Terms of Service. Sentinel provides research tools that promote discovery and accountability across political media.
