Agenda - 06-26-2007-4ff - Laserfiche WebLink

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~sr June 18, 2007 The Honorable Joe Hackney Speaker North Carolina House of Representatives 2207 State Legislative Building Raleigh, NC 27601-1096 Dear Speaker Hackney: On behalf of Google Inc., I write to urge you to oppose HB 1 S 87, the Local Government Fair Competition Act. Google is proud to be bringing jobs and investment to North Carolina, and, as Representative Starnes can attest, we have a large stake in the success and prosperity of North Carolina. HB 1587 threatens to undermine that prosperity. We support strong, fair and open competition to ensure users can enjoy the widest range of choice and opportunities to access content online. The United States is rapidly losing ground to other nations in per capita broadband deployment, access to high-capacity networks, cost per unit of bandwidth, and growth of new broadband user. States can ill afford to enact measures like HB 1587, which impair the ability of the public sector to work hand-in-hand with the private sector to reverse these trends. That is especially true of North Carolina, which, accordin to the FCC's latest statistics, ranks 41St among the states in broadband adoption and 47~' in growth of broadband subscriptions since 2002. Google is a strong supporter of public-private partnerships far economic development, educational opportunity, digital inclusion, and quality of life in North Carolina. HB1587 threatens to undermine the establishment of such partnerships, particularly in rural and high-cost urban areas of North Carolina, which the state's incumbent providers are serving either poorly or not at all. Google believes that North Carolina should be lowering barriers to public broadband initiatives rather than establishing riew ones, so that more high tech companies, like Google, can spread across this beautiful state. Please preserve and advance North Carolina's place in a global economy by opposing HB1587. Sincerely, John Burchett State Policy Counsel