Case study in brief: Residents of Wilson, NC were unable to purchase quality high-speed internet access at any price. The incumbent near-monopoly private ISP in

Case study in brief: Residents of Wilson, NC were unable to purchase quality high-speed internet access at any price. The incumbent near-monopoly private ISP in the state was disinterested in servicing rural communities to any significant degree, citing "cost of infrastructure" as their primary reason to neglect these markets. Eventually the folks in Wilson got tired of ISDN-equivalent internet access and took matters into their own hands. The municipality floated a bond, contracted to lay fiber, and within a couple years had most of the town wired up with some of the fasted connectivity anywhere on the eastern seaboard. Then (and only then) Time Warner steps in and starts pressuring state legislators to do something because "government shouldn't compete with private industry". HB 129 was drafted, passed the GA, and the governor at the time, while refusing to sign the thing, also refused to veto it. Wilson's ISP was forced to halt expansion despite several other local rural communities interest in getting added to the network. Internet access in eastern NC still sucks, with no remedy in sight.