My Brother's "Amicus Curiae"
in the Supreme Court of the United States,
the 1996 Telecommunications Act,
and a 2014 "Pro-Public Broadband Frenzy"
Of course, there was a lot of "rural broadband deployment" action even before 2002, when Scott County Telephone Cooperative secured the federal Community Connect grant for the Pioneer Center in Duffield, Virginia. The history of rural broadband deployment includes, for example, the 1996 Telecommunications Act.
Here's part of one of my recent facebook posts, "I google 'Rick Boucher 1995 telecommunications.' The search results produce 45,600 results. I click on the very top link. and VOILA! lol! First it says 'In the Supreme Court of the United States' at the top of the page and at the bottom of the page there's 2 names: Rick Boucher and Steven R. Minor!! There's my brother's name on the first page of the top link!!! It might be a big Internet, but it's a small world."
His facebook comment response, "I got involved with those projects because I wrote an unsolicited piece for the Bristol paper in support of BVU's fiber plans."
My brother lives and works in Bristol, Virginia and the "BVU" he's referring to is Bristol Virginia Utilities Board. You can read more about it in the document. Of course, since my brother wrote it, I think it's an absolutely excellent document. It provides an historic overview into the 1996 Telecommunications Act and rural broadband deployment action. The document was written by my brother for Rick Boucher and it was accepted in the Supreme Court of the United States as an "Amicus Curiae," a "friend of the court" document.
The "Amicus Curiae" document began with the argument that, "The 1996 Telecommunications Act was the product of years of work by Congressman Boucher and other Members of Congress to increase the availability of telecommunications services and competition among telecommunications." The topic at hand appeared to be focused primarily on, "whether Congress intended the 1996 Act to preempt state laws that would be barriers to the entry of local governments into the market for providing telecommunications services." The first sentence on the document's "Argument" launched a very strong stance, stating, "State laws prohibiting local governments from providing telecommunications services are invalid."
Check it out, an overview of the 1996 Telecommunications Act is included in my brother's "Amicus Curiae" in the Supreme Court of the United States, available at www.baller.com/pdfs/boucher_amicus.pdf.
Now fast forward to 2014. Apparently, whether or not "State laws prohibiting local governments from providing telecommunications services are invalid" is still a hot topic in many ways.
For example, the title of a March 6, 2014 blog post by Craig Settles, available at www.roisforyou.wordpress.com/2014/03/06/tennessee-legies-go-into-pro-public-broadband-frenzy/, exclaimed that Tennessee legislators were going into a "Pro-Public Broadband Frenzy." In the blog entry, Craig Settles stated that "Tennessee legislators were quietly ushering through not one but FOUR bills to un-do some of the restrictions previous legies put in place several years ago. This kind of reversal is practically unheard of in the 19 states that clamped lids on muni nets." He further commented, "Actually what’s happening is full bi-partisanship in dual-chamber drives."
He also emphasized the significance of Tennessee's "Pro-Public Broadband Frenzy," stating, "First and foremost, this development means that the reality of broadband’s role as the utility of the 21st Century has taken root in at least one formerly hostile statehouse."
In his blog, he provided a list of the bills, links for more information about the bills, and short summaries. His summaries included bills that "Lets electric co-ops with dark fiber serve people un-served by telephone co-op" and "Allows muni utilities to expand broadband into rural communities."
Here's one of the links he provided:
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