Let's Hear it for New Orleans

I've been sitting in a conference on telecommunications law for two days, biting my tongue. I've had to hear Verizon tell me why I shouldn't do municipal networking OR make them build out thier network to everyone in town (they're bring good high-speed bandwidth to town in Kirkland, which is very good [yeah, competition and real high speeds], but I don't much agree with thier policy stance). This is a recipe for no competition anywhere except the richest parts of town. Most of Kirkland is rich - it's a problem for us, but not a bleeding on the floor problem. But there are a lot of communities that the union of these two laws will disenfranchise entirely. SInce I came from a few of those, I care.

Anyway, in the middle of trying mightily to be polite in the face of a lot of conservative rhetoric from about half the speakers here, I see this article on New Orleans (on wired.com. Click on the blog title). Apparently, the big telcos want to turn off New Orleans' network. Bad boys. Makes you look like the RIAA.