The city of Poplar Bluff just passed an ordinance that says a Megabit on their network costs $1051 when sold to an ISP. Yes, that's right, a business can purchase a 3Meg Cable Account from MyCityCable for $99/month (or $33 per Megabit), but when sold to an ISP, that 3 Megabits costs $3153. AT&T charges ISPs and large businesses $22 per Megabit Level3 charges $45 per Megabit in Poplar Bluff Level3 charges $12.50 per Megabit in St Louis

The following was read (a few edits have been made) by Brian Becker at the City Council Meeting on 7/19/2010: My name is Brian Becker and I own and operate Poplar Bluff Internet, dba semo.net, at 1877 N Westwood Blvd. This afternoon at the Municipal Utilities Advisory Board it was voted by the members to recommend to you this evening to end Open Access. This is all predicated on the false assumption that Open Access is costing the City money.

The ordinance written shortly before 7pm was read and approved and became law tonight. For the next 3 months, ISPs will pay the current rates (which were raised by City Council in January 2010) For the following 12 months, ISPs rates will increase by 43% (semo.net's rates were estimated to increase by over $8,500/month) After 15 months, MyCityCable will be the only ISP on the Cable Network Here are the financial numbers provided by Mr. Bach to the City Council and the Municipal Utilities Advisory Board showing how Mr. Bach calculated the new rates to be charged to the Open Access ISPs.

The following was read at the Poplar Bluff City Council meeting during Citizen Input on July 6th, 2010. ============ My name is Brian Becker, I own Poplar Bluff Internet also known as semo.net. A month ago I stood before City Council asking for action. It’s now been 49 days of being prevented by City Cable to sign up new customers and in several instances over the past month, even lose the ones I already have.

Our office will be closed on Sunday, July 4th and Monday, July 5th in observance of Independence Day. We will resume normal business hours on Tuesday, July 6th. Have a happy and safe holiday!

One of the factors that sets our company apart is our support department. After each trouble ticket with our support team, our customer is sent a survey by email. I am constantly amazed at the number of high praises our team members get (not because they don't deserve it but because human nature's desire to be more vocal over frustrations one would expect frustration to dominate the responses). Though we sometimes get frustrated responses, the overall majority are wonderful praise of our staff. Over the past week, our team dealt with over 200 customer issues and 19 completed the survey for us. Below are the scores given in all 19 surveys and following that are the messages that accompanied the