Virginia Bill Now Passes Muster With Broadband Authority

The Roanoke Valley Broadband Authority, which has opposed a bill to put conditions on municipal broadband buildouts in Virginia, said the latest iteration of the bill—amended Feb. 13 in the Senate Labor and Commerce Committee—is no longer a threat to municipal broadband. The telcom-backed bill—introduced in the Virginia assembly in Jan—would have allowed for municipal buildouts but only if they targeted unserved areas, which it defined as those where the average broadband speed is less than 10 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up. It would also have required an independent study to identify unserved areas before any buildouts and would have put conditions on overbuilding of any existing service at any speed. A municipality would also have had to provide access to rights of way on a first-come, first-serve basis to commercial providers and could not have cross-subsidized its broadband with regulated utility money. The bill was already re-crafted once after the VA governor threatened to veto it.