1st 'Super Wi-Fi' Net Goes Live In North Carolina

alphadogg writes "Lucky residents of Wilmington, N.C., will be the first in the nation to have access to a 'Super Wi-Fi' network. Officials from New Hanover County, N.C., announced Thursday that they had become the first in the United States to deploy a mobile data network on so-called 'white spaces' spectrum that the FCC first authorized for unlicensed use in 2008."

Wow.

[Frosty Piss]

Boy! How were they able to do that without some cable / telecom lobby dumping stacks of 100$ on the state political whores to block it? Amazing.

Re:WTF?

[clarkkent09]

Well, as far as I understand the article, shutting off the analog TV opened up the frequencies to be used for "Super Wi-Fi", so it's not that crazy.

Enjoy your grandfathering...

[RobinEggs]

Don't assume this rollout represents friendliness to municipal internet in North Carolina. The state congress effectively banned it last year; only those existing projects explicitly named in the bill were exempt from the ban hammer. I'm not sure if this project was one of those so named or whether it's simply not covered by the law, but either way North Carolina now officially sucks for public telecom services. It's not actually impossible to start a municipal internet service, but you're required to publish all of your business plans and to hold public meetings at which every private telecom in your municipality or any bordering municipality is entitled to a competing proposal. This is Monticello, MN on steroids: Telecoms don't even have to sue the public project now, they simply wait until someone is actually organized enough to attempt a public option, analyze the completely public business plan for the public option, and at the mandatory meeting pitch a competing proposal that improves their existing service just barely enough to kill that public option.

The best part is, while every single provision in the bill exists to hamper public options in ways that private companies don't deal with and couldn't survive, the bill was called the "Level Playing Field" act. North Carolina House Bill 129 [state.nc.us]. I now live under a telecommunications policy that was literally written by Time Warner.