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Why Municipal Broadband is Good
batageek writes "An excellent interview with Jim Baller (muni-telco-lawyer) concerning the growth and efforts of municipal broadband providers and the fights they go through with the incumbent providers and state legislatures." If you're wondering why you don't have fiber-to-the-home yet, read this.
Jim Baller, municipal broadband attorney
Written by Karl Bode
We recently had a chance to sit down with Jim Baller, one of the nation's leading experts on municipal broadband projects, and pick his brain for details on the growing number of communities looking toward municipal broadband for technical (and sometimes economic) salvation. We asked the members of our broadband politics forum to contribute some questions, as well as blending in some questions of our own.
BBR: Please explain who you are and what it is exactly that you do.
Jim Baller: I am the founder and senior principal of the Baller Herbst Law Group, P.C., a national law practice based in Washington, DC, and Minneapolis, MN. The Firm represents the American Public Power Association, the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors, regional and state municipal electric associations, state municipal leagues, local governments, and public power systems across the United States on a broad range of regulatory, administrative, legislative and judicial matters involving telecommunications, cable services, Internet access, and other communications and information services. In short, we represent public entities in just about everything that affects them in the communications area, including municipal broadband matters, franchising, right-of-way management, pole and conduit attachments, tower siting, strategic planning, etc...
Before answering your questions, I'd like to give you some personal background information that may help put my answers into perspective. For the first two decades of my legal career, my practice consisted almost entirely of representing major corporations in matters in which a federal agency was involved. I was an ardent supporter of private enterprise (and still am), and this experience gave me a strong and enduring negative opinion of the federal government. I had an even lower opinion of local governments as a result of living in DC during the Marion Barry years.
In 1992, I began to work with the American Public Power Association and its members on cable and telecommunications matters. Early on, I had the opportunity to research and write an extensive historical paper that compared the early days of the electric power industry with the current period in the communications industry (link). What an eye-opener that was! Not only were the parallels remarkable, but I was surprised to learn that my views of government in general simply did not apply to municipalities that operate their own electric utilities.
Specifically, I learned that, at the turn of the last century, when electricity was the great new technology of the age, the private sector focused first on electrifying the major population centers and literally left most of America in the dark. Recognizing that electrification was critical to their economic development and survival, thousands of communities that were not large enough or profitable enough to attract private power companies created their own electric utilities. Municipal electric utilities also emerged in several large cities, in which residents believed that competition was necessary to lower prices, raise the quality of service, or both. Most of these communities found that they could provide for their own needs better and at far lower cost than the private sector could or was willing to do. Eventually, hundreds of these communities sold their systems to private power companies, having fulfilled their purpose of avoiding being left behind in obtaining the benefits of electrification. Most communities, however, retained their systems. Today, approximately 2000 public power systems continue to exist and thrive, providing their communities significantly better service at substantially lower prices than investor-owned utilities provide.
Now, the history of the electric power industry is repeating itself in the communications area. Indeed, for many of the communities that were left behind by the private electric companies, its "deja vu all over again." T