In this article, James Baller and Sean Stokes of the Baller Herbst Law Group, Washington, DC, participants in numerous state legislative battles against proposed barriers to municipal telecommunications activities and lead counsel in the Abilene and Missouri preemption cases, discuss the parallels in the evolution of the electric power and telecommunications industries,
examine several recent state telecommunications measures, analyze the leading judicial and administrative cases on state barriers to entry, review the main policy arguments for and against the public sector’s role in providing or facilitating the provision of telecommunications services, and suggest a number practical steps that communities can take to combat state barriers to entry