More on the Anti-Wi-Fi Lobby.

Today's Progress Report from the Center for American Progress offers a well-research and link-heavy piece on telecom providers lobbying against locally established broadband and wi-fi networks. As I noted in an earlier post, local Wi-Fi efforts elsewhere have been stymied by companies lobbying states for preemptive legislation.

The Progress Report pegs the piece to BellSouth renegging on a humanitarian donation because New Orleans is installing municipal broadband network (a story our own Jeff Hess also blogs.) From there they run down the most egregious instances of telecom rent seeking. They also link to this action alert from freepress.net calling for support for the Community Broadband Act -- a counterproposal to Big Telecom's Community Broadband Hosing Act.

As I said previously, it's God's own miracle we haven't seen this nonsense in our General Assembly. But then, they are awfully busy with prosteletizing license plates and all.