SBAS has been coming to the rescue of Southern Berkshire County since 1968. It is now part of a study aimed at evaluating the critical challenges facing EMS providers across the district.
The Five Town Cable Cable Advisory Committee voted to send a letter to state Attorney General Maura Healey urging her to take legal action to reverse a decision made last month by the FCC that local access channels say would devastate their funding.
Those who run the county’s three access channels say the new rules, which would severely impact their revenue streams, would likely put them out of business and deprive the public of valuable programming available nowhere else.
In her letter to the chairman of the FCC, Sheila Irvin of Pittsfield writes: “We would argue that the FCC must rein in the demands of the commercial interests it oversees when those demands conflict with the public good.”
Those who run the county's three access channels say the new rules, which would severely impact their revenue streams, would likely put them out of business and deprive the public of valuable programming available nowhere else.
The opinion of Berkshire County experts ranges from skepticism to staunch opposition to the repeal of net neutrality, which is the principle that internet service providers must treat all data on the internet in the same manner and not charge different rates based content or platform.
"There can be no truly open internet without net neutrality. To believe otherwise is to be captive to special interest power brokers."
-- Former FCC Commissioner Michael Copps