Folks pardon my tardiness, I have been amidst a move and there is no furniture in the new apartment. Sitting on the floor and typing is a bit of a problem, so I am going to do a few round-ups before I can get to a more blog-worthy seating arrangement.

On the muni broadband front, 7628.htm”>Florida has joined the parade of states – eight in total – who have introduced anti-muni broadband bills, mostly backed by incumbents including Sprint, BellSouth, Comcast, Verizon and in other places, SBC and Cox. Oregon will begin its anti-muni deliberations on Febraury 23rd, while Illinois is thinking against muni broadband.

My buddy Glenn has a scathing must read editorial on this whole mess. “Why are incumbent telecommunications firms and cable operators so afraid of municipal networks? They must work or they wouldn’t be spending tens of millions of dollars in lobbying and advertising to fight them,” he writes. Free Press echoes the sentiments and writes, “If I were a municipality, I would certainly NOT be signing up for ‘how to deliver good service’ lessons from a telco or a cable company.”

On the flip side, 20050220/OPINION01/502200325/1014″>Lafayette Daily Advertiser says that the “city should move forward on the fiber-to-the-home plan.” And those of you who think that muni-broadband doesn’t work, think again. Google is going to Oregon precisely because of the broadband infrastructure. Daily Wireless has the full lowdown.