North Carolina citizens scored a huge victory on Tuesday, as House Bill 1587 was sent to a study community.

This awful bill would have eliminated the ability of towns and cities to build community broadband networks (and other communication services) for their citizens and essentially writing a monopoly for AT&T and Time Warner into law.

This victory follows more than 700 citizens throughout the state sending letters and making phone calls demanding that this bill be defeated.

AT&T and Time Warner do not provide services for many of the communities that want to build their our Broadband networks. This alone is disgraceful, but now these companies want to lock in their control of North Carolina's marketplace by passing a law that would stifle any other options for these areas.

This decision to send this bill to a study committee protects communities rights until the group issues a full report in 2009. The study committee could potentially recommend the bill's passage at that time, but for the time being North Carolina's towns and communities have won a huge victory.