In his latest tilt at windmills, McCain, with Lautenberg’s help, has authored the Community Broadband Act of 2005 (S. 1294), which would amend the Telecommunications Act of 1996 to allow cities and towns to operate their own broadband networks. “Many of the countries outpacing the United States in the deployment of high speed Internet services, including Canada, Japan and South Korea, have successfully combined municipal systems with privately deployed networks to wire their countries,” McCain said. This, of course, flies in the face of legislation from other Republicans, including Texas Rep. Pete Sessions (a former SBC exec) and Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who are working to ban municipal WiFi networks altogether.

[ The sooner the better. -k]