With all the rhetoric about net neutrality, we need to realize that competition, not regulation, is the driver for faster Internet speeds and lower costs. For example look at what happens when Google Fiber enters a market: CNET article

"Google Fiber has been the biggest driver of the fiber-to-the home movement," said Blair Levin, executive director of the Gig.U project and head of the committee that wrote the 2010 National Broadband Plan for the Federal Communications Commission. Blair isn't alone. FCC chairman Tom Wheeler said, “Competition drives broadband. It’s that simple.”

When the ISPs move too slowly municipalities have stepped in to build their own Gigabit Internet infrastructure (reference article). In North Carolina we can easily look to Wilson's Greenlight service and Salisbury's Fibrant service as examples of cities building their own infrastructure in advance of the competitive market.

Jonathan Feldman, CIO of the City of Asheville and a writer for Information Week wrote a great piece about ISP competition, The subtitle, for which we couldn't agree more, is "Competition, not massive regulation, is the best way to make the Internet open." For the complete article click here.

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