The Manassas City Council is killing the Internet!
The council is deciding on whether to abandon its broadband through power line (BPL) project now, or to let it die a slow death 'til the end of the fiscal year, reports InsideNoVa.
BPL was the city's magical attempt to bring chatrooms, porn and pirated music into the homes of every Manassas resident by providing low-cost broadband service. Instead of plugging a cable in and dealing with a giant monopoly, subscribers could access the internet through the regular electrical outlets.
Sounds pretty nifty, but there's a reason it hasn't caught on. It's slow. It's expensive to maintain. And it ticks off the HAM radio operators. (And hell hath no fury like a scorned HAM radio operator.)
After the city dumped a bazillion dollars into the project, they have only about 600 subscribers. Meanwhile, the whole project's costing hundreds of thousands of dollars in ongoing costs.
Meanwhile, Comcast claims to serve the entire city, and Verizon has rapidly been expanding its FIOS service there.
So the council has decided to pull the plug, likely choosing to waste the money elsewhere.
Now it looks like Manassas's residents are going to have to soon turn to the monopolies for their quality Hulu time.
