I’m going to step into it big time here and make a bold comment. We have too many politicians and lawyers trying involved in driving broadband services and not enough business people and engineers. Politicians and lawyers should be trying to facilitate the penetration of broadband services, not drive the business. We have technical solutions to these issues, but they have yet to really gain traction in the U.S. for the reasons I mentioned above.
Like too many issues in our society, this one seems to boils down to whether you believe in big or limited government. The big government types are perfectly willing to compete or eliminate commercial enterprises in the name of fairness or some other lofty goal. The truth is that they always have an ulterior motive. Municipal broadband enterprises are at best a 50/50 proposition, but those odds are not sufficient in my view when it comes to sticking taxpayers with the bill. Our Constitution says nothing about guaranteeing citizens the right to the Internet nor is it a public safety issue. Universal Service was a deal concocted by AT&T with the Federal Government to allow their monopoly to continue. When divestiture occurred, it was a holdover for the RBOC.
I am a firm believer in the value of broadband services not as a “right” but as a way for a community to benefit all of its citizens. A thriving community will always have high broadband penetration. There are ways to achieve this goal without the government competing with private enterprises. I will be posting a few articles shortly where some European cities and countries as well as San Francisco have seen the light.
Suppose we’ve been framing the questions associated with municipal–or municipally sponsored–broadband in the wrong way?
Suppose the question isn’t whether or not municipal is a good idea (and volumes have already been written on that topic), but, in fact, who will serve rural and remote areas when the private firms, for any number of good reasons (and some not-so-good reasons) won’t?
When the shouting’s done and opposing parties have each had time to take deep breaths, most combatants are motivated by self-preservation. This is a harsh generalization, but I suspect it applies regardless of the contested issue. In this light, debates over sports referees’ calls, as an example, are really no different than the current clamor over the viability of municipal broadband. At the end of the day, it’s all about perspective.
Perhaps the most commonly heard argument when issues of municipal broadband are raised is that it’s unfair to force for-profit companies –like Time Warner and Verizon, among many others–to compete with the government. On the other hand, are individuals and communities entitled to broadband, which has become essential for any community that wants not just to compete in today’s economy, but to participate at all? And if a community can’t get broadband because it’s not financially feasible for providers to serve that place, is the community entitled to get broadband some other way? And if so, who pays for the infrastructure?
