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2 <br />ORANGE COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS <br />RESOLUTION OPPOSING HOUSE BILL 1252 and SENATE BILL 1004 <br />(Entitled by Proponents as the Level Playing Field Act) <br />WHEREAS, House Bill 1252 and its companion bill, Senate Bill 1004, both entitled "Level <br />Playing Field/Cities/Service Providers" and referred to by proponents as the Level Playing <br />Field Act, have been introduced in the 2009 Session of the General Assembly of North <br />Carolina, and referred to the Senate Commerce Committee and House Public Utilities <br />Committee, respectively; and <br />WHEREAS, these bills do not provide a "level playing field" to cities, towns and counties, <br />but greatly hinder local governments from providing needed communications services, <br />especially advanced high-speed broadband services, in underserved areas; and <br />WHEREAS, the bills do not provide a "level playing field", but instead impose numerous <br />obligations on local government that private broadband companies do not have to meet; and <br />WHEREAS, private companies, despite having received favorable regulatory and tax <br />treatment to enable broadband investment, have chosen to avoid the financial commitment <br />necessary to provide top quality services, instead offering lesser quality, slower non-state-of- <br />the-art infrastructure technologies that are not even available to all residents; and <br />WHEREAS, while private companies declare top quality service is cost-prohibitive in our <br />country, the United States continues to lose ground to other nations in broadband access, cost <br />and growth in the number of users, falling behind the United Kingdom, Korea, France, Japan <br />and Canada to name a few, with Japan's less expensive internet access at least 500 times <br />faster than what is considered high-speed in the United States; and <br />WHEREAS, the U.S. Congress provided funds in the American Recovery and Reinvestment <br />Act to reverse our country's catastrophic broadband decline by making local and state <br />governments, and not private communication companies, directly eligible for $4.7 billion in <br />federal grants to provide affordable access to high capacity broadband services in unserved <br />and underserved areas; and <br />WHEREAS, the bills would prohibit North Carolina local governments from using federal <br />grant funds to deploy or operate locally-owned or operated broadband systems, thereby <br />denying North Carolina residents access to billions of dollars of federal assistance available <br />to the rest of the country and hindering employment opportunities; and <br />WHEREAS, deployment of true high-speed broadband internet is a new public utility vital <br />to the future economic development, educational outreach, and community growth in North <br />Carolina necessary to replace lost textile, tobacco, furniture and manufacturing jobs; and <br />