Minutes 01-27-2017 - Laserfiche WebLink

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13 In reply to a question from Chair Dorosin, John Roberts said incentives for extending broadband service could indeed be provided in the context of negotiations with internet service providers over their access to the County's emergency radio towers. In reply to a question from Commissioner Marcoplos, Jim Northup said it became legal for Greenlight, the City of Wilson's fiber optic network, to expand beyond the county borders after the FCC required internet service providers to be regulated as a utility. North Carolina and Tennessee then won a lawsuit against the FCC on that point. But since Greenlight already had extended its network into Pinetops, Wilson agreed to provide internet service for free to Pinetops until special legislation is passed allowing Wilson and Pinetops to have a business partnership. Commissioner McKee said a representative of Piedmont Electric asked him to convey the Cooperative's interest in collaborating with the County on broadband. Their towers and poles might be able to play a role in the extension of broadband. Jim Northup explained a recent County attempt at attracting smaller providers. The County began collaborating with the State on a vertical assets inventory in August 2015. In that context they were able to do customer market research for internet service providers as an incentive for them to extend into underserved areas. Eight or nine providers attended a meeting, including landline and wireless services. They briefed the attendees on all the vertical assets located in Orange County, including towers not owned by the County and County buildings (our most numerous vertical asset). Only one company gave them a proposal, but it had an exorbitant fee and showed no interest in expanding into their underserved areas. Commissioner McKee added that there was not a lot of enthusiasm. Jim Northup said that they learned from that. Now they are looking at what other communities do to attract providers, and that appears to be internal fiber projects: providing fiber networks to "backhaul" to existing towers so that smaller providers can be more competitive against the larger providers. The fiber they are installing will connect our facilities to each other while at the same time providing something of value they can offer to smaller providers needing incentives to connect to the larger system. John Roberts said, in reply to a question from Chair Dorosin, even if the law prohibiting local governments from becoming internet service providers were repealed, there is still no authority under any legislation permitting counties to do so. In North Carolina, if the State has not authorized a county to do something then the county may not do it. In addition, since there is special legislation allowing some municipalities to act as internet service providers, then the absence of explicit State authority for counties to act as internet service providers is especially prohibitive. Chair Dorosin said that a better legislative strategy for Orange County would be to get local authorization to serve as an internet provider rather than to repeal the existing prohibition. Commissioner Jacobs said Orange County is an aquarium inside an ocean. ALEC promulgated a model law that has been adopted by dozens of states to prevent local governments from providing this kind of service. Now that we at least have a Democratic Governor, they might explore whether there is interest in pursuing legislation to help all rural communities. Rural development is supposed to be an interest of the people who control our State government. He said he happened to believe that they are immune to the notion of contradiction or hypocrisy, and so appeals to such notions will do nothing. But Senator Tillis was in the General Assembly when the restrictions on local governments were passed. He might be able to tell them why he is opposed to local authority. They could then go to someone who might be willing to propose an adjustment to the legislation. He said he does not think the legislature is going to be supportive of a local authorization for an individual county, and if it were, then only Durham would be less likely to get an individual authorization from the legislature than Orange. He said there might be specific points in the law that they can get clarified in our favor by either the legislature or the Governor making a statewide proposal.