The Battle Over AT&T's Fiber Rollout

Tyler Too writes "AT&T is facing heated opposition from some communities where it wants to deploy its U-Verse fiber network. Ars Technica has a feature looking at the situation in the suburbs of Chicago. 'Legal uncertainty is the rule when it comes to IPTV deployments by telecommunications companies. Neither Congress nor the FCC [has] weighed in on whether services like U-verse require their operators to take out a cable franchise from cities, and no federal judge has issued a definitive ruling.' It's not just Chicago, either: 'With AT&T set to upgrade its infrastructure to support U-verse across its wide service area, this is a battle that could play out in thousands of communities across the country over the next few years.'"

Re:Big Business is against local power

[Anonymous Coward]

If you knew how much that public access stuff cost, you'd probably wish the money went to something else. Now that we have the internet, it is absurd to spend 50-100 thousand dollars per town, per year for public access. Do you have any idea what that adds up to? It's over $15 million dollars a year in my state alone.

I remember something from my days of playing SimCity 3000. There was an ordinance you could pass, the "public access television" ordinance. All the strategy sites essentially said "This is intentionally a money-waster." Art imitates life.