North Carolina is looking to restrict municipal broadband, and UTC is fighting against it. This week UTC and seven other signatories (including the American Public Power Association, Alcatel-Lucent, Google and Intel) sent a letter to the North Carolina legislature opposing a bill that would place a moratorium on public broadband deployments, such as those by municipal utilities. That succeeded in getting legislators to back off a complete ban, but they did decide to consider legislation that would restrict the funding of such broadband deployments.

Specifically, the draft bill would require localities to go through a referendum process to obtain funding, and UTC and other proponents of municipal broadband are concerned that these restrictions could have the same practical effect as a ban because incumbent providers such as AT&T and Time Warner can launch massive advertising campaigns against any such referendum. Although the sponsor of the bill, Sen. Hoyle stated that the bill would grandfather existing municipal broadband deployments, the bill would require any municipal broadband financing, improvement, upgrade or repair to be funded with general obligation bonds. As such, it may restrict existing and future deployments. Although the bill has been introduced, it has not been given a bill number yet. UTC will post the bill and report developments as they become available.