Good news from our neighbor to the north, Edmonds, WA:

Edmonds Council votes to pursue customers for its broadband business

The Edmonds City Council unanimously approved a resolution Tuesday night to support efforts to pursue customers for the city’s 24 strands of fiber optic cable, which so far have been largely unused by anyone other than the city itself [...] Efforts so far to market [the city's] broadband have been stymied by a poor economy and a year-long delay while the city successfully went to court to secure the right to sell broadband services to private entities. [...]

While the city has spent $492,000 to activate the broadband network, it is saving approximately $97,000 annually because it doesn’t have to purchase fiber optic services, and is expected to recoup its investment by 2015.

Full article in MyEdmondsNews here, with useful background here.

This is great news for folks in Edmonds, who by and large already enjoy better Internet connectivity than most people in Seattle, with fiber broadband offered by Frontier (formerly Verizon); now there will be a locally, municipally owned alternative. The resulting competition should benefit customers in pricing and service.

Meanwhile, Seattle's broadband future remains mired in inertia, despite the city's technology office having a remarkably clear vision for pursuing a municipal fiber system of our own, and despite Mayor McGinn campaigning on the issue.

For the next week, Detroit will be the epicenter for two major gatherings for progressive and social justice organizing: the twelfth Allied Media Conference and the second U.S. Social Forum. Washington State and the Northwest will be well-represented, with large delegations from urban and rural social justice organizations, labor unions, student groups and others. Reclaim the Media will be there with a delegation of Seattle-area activists and organizers from our Northwest MAG-Net coalition, including representatives from Reel Grrls, KBCS, Communities Against Rape and Abuse, Hidmo, Youth Media Institute, the Community Alliance for Global Justice and others. Follow the action on Twitter: #amc2010, #nwussf, #mediajustice.

Today, over 170 House Republicans sent FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski a letter urging the Commmission not to proceed with plans to protect an open Internet by reclassifying broadband as a "telecommunications service" rather than as a radically deregulated "information service." All three Washington State GOP representatives signed the letter, including Congressman Dave Reichert, who previously voted in support of net neutrality rules, saying that the Internet "should be an equal place" for people and companies. Reichert has apparently reversed his earlier opinion, and now stands with GOP leadership in support of open Internet opponents (and Reichert donors) AT&T, and Comcast.

In cities and towns in every US state, community radio advocates are (figuratively) holding their breath as the Local Community Radio Act inches slowly towards passage in the Senate. The bill, which will allow a dramatic expansion of the Low Power FM (LPFM) community radio service, was approved by the House of Representatives last fall. Under the dedicated leadership of Senator Maria Cantwell, the Senate Commerce Committee has also passed the bill, leaving a final Senate vote as the final hurdle to clear.

After last month's FCC Open Internet community meetings in Seattle, Reclaim the Media and other members of the Seattle Digital Justice Coalition have been working overtime to ensure that community concerns about the future of the Internet reach the ears of our elected officials in the nation's capital.

Within days of FCC Chairman Genachowski's announcement that the FCC would reassert its authority to police net neutrality and online privacy abuses, RTM met with the offices of Sen. Maria Cantwell, Rep. Jay Inslee, and Rep. Dave Reichert, in order to share what we heard from the folks from Seattle, Olympia, Bellingham and Mt.Vernon who attended our April 27 community meeting on protecting a fair and open Internet.

This week, the National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC) filed comments (pdf) in the FCC's proceeding on the Future of Media and Information Needs of Communities in the Digital Age. Joined by 32 national and regional organizations from throughout the country, the comments ask the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) to examine hate speech in media.

Harold Feld from Public Knowledge provides a great summary of the FCC's proposed broadband reclassification, the positives and negatives from a public interest perspective, and the likely fight that likes ahead.

Today, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski announced his intention to reassert the FCC's authority to protect broadband consumers' rights, including net neutrality. The Chairman's full statement is here (pdf).

The move comes two weeks after a federal appeals court decision (Comcast vs.FCC) undermined the legal basis under which the FCC had sought to prevent Internet companies from blocking access to websites; and one week after a room full of folks in Seattle resoundingly told FCC that net neutrality oversight was needed to preserve an open Internet.

“I was a field organizer for Obama up in Ohio for the general election and more recently I was the volunteer coordinator for the McGinn campaign for Mayor. To me, net neutrality really has to do with access to information and access to the ability to organize information. In Kentucky they made me the volunteer coordinator for out of state volunteers. Basically, using a Google spreadsheet we organized close to 1,500 volunteers to come to Kentucky from all parts of the country and knock on doors. I realized the power of these completely free online organizing tools and the deeper into the campaign I got the more I realized that this was a political force being run by college students and 20-somethings on laptops using free online tools and sharing information tools. It really stuck with me. The ability of people to organize themselves and how that affects their ability to access power. That to me is what net neutrality means.”

-- Sol Villarreal, Community Engagement Coordinator, Office of the Mayor, City of Seattle, comments to the FCC on preserving a fair and open Internet, Seattle 27 April 2010