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Municipal broadband: access for all

The Texas Legislature wants to continue to prohibit municipalities from providing network services to citizens. I say continue, because that's been the law since '95. In an overhaul of telecom legislation, they seek to make the prohibition even stronger. Their argument is that cities shouldn't compete with private industry. Rep. Phil King, chair of the House Regulated Industries Committee, made a strange analogy during last week's testimony. He asked of more than one person testifying against the bill, if there was no grocery store in a town or city, would they expect the city to open one? What was strange about that analogy is that there is no law on the books prohibiting cities from opening grocery stores, and none proposed.

Other analogies come to mind:

• Private companies sell water, therefore cities shouldn't offer water service to citizens.
• Private companies operate taxi services and bus lines, so cities shouldn't provide or fund transit services.
• Private companies can build and maintain roads, so the city should stop competing; all roads should be private toll roads. (Austinites would love that, right?)
• Private companies can build commercial swimming environments, so cities should stop operating public pools. (After all, every community should have its mini-Schlitterbahn, no?)

In fact, the reason municipal public network projects are popping up around Texas and elsewhere is because they make perfect sense to dang near everybody... except for large companies, many of them incumbent telcos (aka "baby bells"), who were hoping to limit competition and control pricing. They definitely don't want cities in the mix. They especially don't want to have to compete with projects that are subsidized by tax dollars and are not necessarily priced for profit maximization. That's mighty tough competiton.

However I would argue that the cities that are their natural markets won't try to compete in a big way, because those cities will already have robust advanced service offerings from multiple sources, as in Austin we have SBC, Time Warner, Verizon, and various smaller ISPs. From an economic development perspective, a city would want these companies to succeed, and would offer limited public service where it makes sense (libraries, parks, publid events, economic zones, etc.)

Though some cities may offer broader network access (e.g. the Corpus Christi Wireless Project) because it fits specific needs and/or supports their plans for economic development, and they shouldn't be constrained from doing so.

However the only communities likely to offer substantial advanced wireless services to most if not all citizens are smaller rural communities that are outside the market focus of big telcos. There are some parts of rural Texas where even dialup won't work – and I hear there are areas where there's no basic phone service at all. The larger providers suggest that they'll address these markets, but they don't tell you what level and quality of service they'll provide. As Consumers Union says at the just-launched hearusnow.org,

Throughout the U.S., a growing number of Americans are tired of the cable and telephone company bottlenecks to Internet access. What's at stake are people's ability to come together to offer alternative ways to connect themselves and their neighbors to the Internet. Policymakers, industry groups and community activists will continue to debate these network opportunities, and whether or not sufficient spectrum is available for them to expand. (http://www.hearusnow.org/index.php?id=401)

Texas and other states shouldn't constrain municipalities from deploying networks to protect corporate profits. A better way to frame the issue is not that municipalities will create unfair competition, but that they will lay the groundwork for competition where there was none, in traditionally underserved markets. Where information services are concerned, "underserved" means excluded from the evolving network economy and society. Legislation that constrains municipal networks will inherently support and grow the "digital divide."

See "Save Muni Wireless" for more information.

jon posted this at 9:55 AM
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