Anti-Federalism rears its ugly head with Rep. Sessions's bill: The bill would ban municipal networks where any competitive service existed in the municipal area of governance. A grandfather clause allows existing services to proceed.
The language of the "Preserving Innovation in Telecom Act of 2005" is so hilariously broad and ill-defined that it could kill all kinds of projects that the incumbent carriers this is meant to protect would support or are involved in deploying. It has such a broad grandfather clause that it could allow massive projects to continue if even a tiny portion of the service was in use.
I doubt it will go anywhere because in its current form, it's a shotgun full of buckshot, not a surgical weapon. A broad consortium of businesses and public policy groups will certainly try to get it killed. I doubt it will get many supporters because of its broad sweep.
For instance, this bill would kill all future airport Wi-Fi that's not already built out because government entities would be unable to "provide" services if Wi-Fi were operating anywhere else in the airport authority's municipality's domain. It's pretty easy to read that interpretation.
Isn't this the opposite of Federalism? Isn't this a bill proposed by the federal government that would stifle local government autonomy, i.e., anti-federalism?
[Editor's note: You are completely correct. I've fixed it in the body of this post.--gf]