Municipal Networks as Alternative to Commercial Broadband?

kenny asks: "There was a front page Wall Street Journal article last month (Aug. 17--sub. required) about local municipalities like Tacoma, Wash. and Coldwater, Mich. building out public fiber-optic networks through tax-free bond issues and run like local utilities. My question is what's been people's experience with municipal broadband networks? It seems like it's made people happy, and if the internet is like a public utility and if companies are dragging their feet about providing service, why shouldn't municipalities take it upon themselves to deliver service for their constituents?"

"Universally, it seems, people get better service and prices when such networks are implemented. It also forces telecom companies operating in the area to offer better service and prices as well, in short, to compete. But it's also increased companies' lobbying efforts against such municipal activity and it's not hard to see why such companies like AT&T Broadband, Charter Communications (controlled by Microsoft), and Qwest don't like it."

Not many municipalities are saavy enough to think about deploying this sort of infrastructure, however. For those in that situation, what kind of lobbying efforts must a municipality put together before village/town/city officials will take notice? If the government does notice, what kind of arguments should be made to convince them that it might be worthwhile to make such an undertaking?

Comments

after my

[bigpat]

dumb post yesterday. I am hesitant to post again so soon. but her it goes...

For speed and price, it very much makes sense for communities to roll out there own high speed internet. They should be able to do so more cheaply than the big companies because of less overhead and more quickly because they should be more driven to serve themselves.

My concern would be over local control of content which is allowed in. No doubt some local communities would try to filter out "bad" speach and writings just as they do with libraries and some cable networks. Also, what about privacy?