The Kansas cable lobby's attempt to ban nearly all municipal broadband networks won't be rising from the dead any time soon.

Last month, the Kansas Cable Telecommunications Association (KCTA), whose members include Comcast, Cox, Eagle Communications, and Time Warner Cable, proposed a ban on telecommunications, video, and broadband services offered to residents and businesses by municipalities. The bill would also have made it illegal for cities and towns to buy, build, lease, maintain, or operate any facility that helps a private business offer telecommunications, video, or broadband services.

One exception allowed municipal networks in "unserved areas," but the bill defined those areas in such a way that none may exist. The bill also had an exception for services provided in municipal buildings. After extensive criticism, the KCTA said it would " tweak " the language in the bill to redefine unserved areas.

Now, though, one of the bill's main opponents is declaring it dead.

"We stabbed it and shot it and hanged it and dissolved it in hydrofluoric acid, and flushed it down the toilet. It's dead," Joshua Montgomery, who runs a small ISP in Lawrence, KS, told Ars.

Montgomery and other opponents of the bill are still sending letters to legislators every day. Between the negative press for the proposed broadband ban and a separate bill to legalize discrimination against gay people, Montgomery thinks Kansas legislators are in no mood to pursue anything controversial for now.

"We are on top of it. We are not going to let it come back up," he said. "I think we did really kill the entire issue for at least a year."

The broadband bill had been scheduled for a Senate committee hearing, but that was canceled. Kansas Sen. Oletha Faust-Goudeau (D) told Montgomery in an e-mail that the bill "has lost its momentum at this time."

When asked if the KCTA plans to submit a revised version of the bill, KCTA President John Federico told Ars this week, "at this time it is highly unlikely that we will be pursing legislation this Legislative Session."

Kansas cities lack adequate broadband

Kansas Budget Director Jon Hummell submitted a financial note on the bill that summarizes some of the opposition's arguments:

The League of Kansas Municipalities indicates that passage of SB 304 would have a significant fiscal effect on the cities in Kansas. The League states that many Kansas cities do not presently have adequate broadband service to meet their own needs or the needs of local businesses and industry. A city may choose to proceed on its own to establish the needed infrastructure and provide the service to the community where existing private businesses do not provide it. The League contends that passage of SB 304 could cause the loss of economic development opportunities, which would include additional jobs and increased assessed valuation of property. In addition, the League notes that an unintended consequence of the act would be that cities would be precluded from leasing space on water towers and other similar aerial structures for use by telecommunications and cable industry. These lease fees can generate thousands of dollars per year for the cities which would be lost under the provisions of the act. The Kansas Association of Counties is unable to estimate what the long-term fiscal effect of passage of SB 304 would be. However, the Association expresses concern that because the bill would revoke local authority to build networks, as well as prohibit municipalities from entering into public-private partnerships, rural locations could be unable to attract modern businesses if the private sector failed to develop an adequate network infrastructure.

ISP lobbies have claimed municipal networks would siphon away taxpayer dollars. But Christopher Mitchell, director of the Telecommunications as Commons Initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, has pointed out that "most networks sell bonds to private investors who are repaid by revenues from the network." It's more common for a municipal broadband service to subsidize other government services than it is to cost taxpayers money, he said.

The Kansas bill's stated goal was to "encourage the development and widespread use of technological advances in providing video, telecommunications and broadband services at competitive rates," even though it would actually protect private ISPs from competition.

Montgomery would like to see a bill that encourages municipalities to build out fiber networks and provide wholesale access to ISPs. "Retailers, guys like me and Comcast and Time Warner and AT&T and anybody who wants to play, would be able to use that wholesale fiber to provide services within the community," he said.

Montgomery said that he drew up language for such a bill and has meetings scheduled with state senators, but he doesn't expect anything to come of it. "A mechanism that basically bans municipalities from being retailers but encourages them to be wholesalers would address a lot of the issues the cable companies are concerned about and still benefit the community," Montgomery said. "That's the pitch I'm going to make. Probably no one is going to listen to me, but I'm going to make it."