I Don't Understand

A recent story on CNN raved about the nation's first free wireless internet network owned and run by a major city. The headline: New Orleans launches free wireless Internet.

The network is currently running at 512 kbps while the city is under a state of emergency. Once the state of emergency is over, the network will be slowed to 128 kbps. The article states the 128 kbps is the fastest a government owned internet service can be. Why?

Read all about it: http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/internet/11/29/wireless.neworleans.ap/index.html