Postmortem in Wyoming: Cheyenne Mayor on Interrupted Legislation – Community Broadband Bits Podcast 308

Local communities considering investment to improve connectivity for businesses and residents have many factors to consider, including state laws. The best laid plans for broadband can be torpedoed if state legislators are influenced enough by incumbent lobbyists to pass laws that complicate local authority or funding. This week, we hear about Wyoming from Cheyenne Mayor Marian Orr.Mayor Orr describes how incumbents in her community claim that access to broadband is plentiful, but business leaders and residents describe a different reality. In order to seek out possible solutions, the city has now created a broadband task force to analyze the problem.Earlier this year, Mayor Orr expressed excitement about SF 100, a state bill that was written to provide funding for local communities interested in exploring better solutions for local connectivity. While the bill was in committee, however, lobbyists from incumbents CenturyLink and Spectrum found a way to derail the parts of the bill that would help places like Cheyenne make their own decisions. Now, the bill requires that funding be used only for public-private partnerships and focus only on the areas with the worst connectivity.I shouldn’t have been surprised to learn industry completely re-wrote proposed broadband legislation to their favor as a “substitute bill” in legislative cmt today. CenturyLink and Spectrum are bullies. It’s wrong and they are hurting WY communities. @ENDOWyo @WYLegislature— Mayor Marian Orr (@gofishwyo) February 19, 2018This show is 16 minutes long and can be played on this page or via iTunes or the tool of your choice using this feed.Read the transcript for this show here.You can download this mp3 file directly from here. Listen to other episodes here or view all episodes in our index.Thanks to Arne Huseby for the music. The song is Warm Duck Shuffle and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. 

Show Notes

Local communities considering investment to improve connectivity for businesses and residents have many factors to consider, including state laws. The best laid plans for broadband can be torpedoed if state legislators are influenced enough by incumbent lobbyists to pass laws that complicate local authority or funding. This week, we hear about Wyoming from Cheyenne Mayor Marian Orr. … Continue reading "Postmortem in Wyoming: Cheyenne Mayor on Interrupted Legislation – Community Broadband Bits Podcast 308" ★ Support this podcast ★

What is Community Broadband Bits?

Short interviews with people doing interesting things to expand broadband networks that put community needs first.