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Broadband War & an Interactive Municipal Map
Ant writes "Broadband Reports mentions a CNET News.com story on the U.S.'s growing debate over municipal broadband. Across the country, acrimonious conflicts have erupted as local governments attempt to create publicly funded broadband services with faster connections and cheaper rates for all citizens, narrowing the so-called digital divide. The Bells and cable companies, for their part, argue that government intervention in their business is not justified and say they are far better equipped to operate complex and far-flung data networks.
There is also an interactive municipal broadband legislative map that details the major battlegrounds on the issue. At stake is the fate of high-speed Internet access for millions of Americans, hinging on a fundamental question of civics and economics--whether the government or private industries should take the leading role in building out what's considered this generation's critical infrastructure challenge. Its map shows a breakdown of muni-projects in each state, which have or are developing fiber or Wi-Fi projects, and are facing (existing or pending) legal barriers to doing business."
They appear to be suggesting that the municipal will compete unfairly; in truth, they simply fear a large buyer with the clout to get a better deal from them for the end consumer.
Wikileaks, no DNS
This will eventually (hopefully) be tested at the Supreme Court level. Cities that want to provide this service, as they do any other utility, ought to be allowed to do so.
http://www.busyweather.com/
I mean, look what that's gotten us so far.
We could do it ourselves if we really wanted to.
- Are incapable of doing good things
- Are always after power, above all else
- Must butt out of everything because tax payer subsidized services ultimately will not compete with non-subsidized services, so they undermine the freedom of the individual (or business) to sell services
Against that, I have to say that I don't see a problem with municipal governments doing this kind of thing. Given their priorities, and the closer accountability they have to their tax payers, I don't see this kind of thing as anything but a "last resort" effort for the majority of them, and I think they have a moral right to involve themselves in things that county, state, and Federal governments really don't have. But many people do not share the same opinion.You will see many people arguing against you in this thread. They're not Verizon employees (well, most of them aren't), they're just more likely to lean on a pro-Business side if they see an area where governments are likely to make it more difficult for a business to operate.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Wouldnt the philosophical analogous argument be that libraries are publicly funded, and provide free information and entertainment to anyone and everyone?
Bookstores still thrive, book publishers still thrive even though probably almost everyone in the United States could get through life never having to buy a book personally.
The idea of public broadband has always been an attractive one for slashdotters, the incursion into this arena by Grant County PUD in central Washington State stands as an example of why we don't want bureaucrats meddling in business.
In this state the PUDs are treated as municipalities under the law and are given a set of rules under which they can operate. Broadband and electrical power are different services so it took an act of the Legislature to allow them to enter the market. The legislature, under some pressure from the big telecoms who were afraid that the PUDs would "cherry pick" the larger communities and leave the rural people to fend for themselves, allowed the PUDs to be "wholesale" only. The first thing Grant County PUD did was ignore that law.
Grant County PUD had first partnered up with two local ISPs which charged $20 to $25 per month for the broadband servoces back at the inception of the project in 1999. But at the same time the Manager of that PUD was trying to attract an outside competitor, also a utility provider, to enter the market in this county at a subsidized rate of $8 per month.
The PUD did attract that utility but only by entering into secret (and illegal) agreements to subsidize the program at cost plus 10%. So the new provider would risk nothing and could make 10% on the rate-payer's money even if they gave away their services for free. Then the PUD employees threw as many of the new customers to this new competitor as possible while their managers used their position as investors to pressure prices to a point where the commercial ISPs could no longer compete profitably.
It was only after the PUD had spent several million dollars propping up this outside provider that the story became known. Meanwhile, the PUD had raised the electrical rates to cover the $100 Million cost of fibering only 1/3 of the County but lied when asked about it. The Commissioners and Managers claimed that the rate increases were due to other factors. However their own emails, obtained under the State's public disclosure act, showed this to be untrue.
Agricultural interests were incensed because they use a lot of that electrical power. A large farm might have a $500k yearly power bill for their irrigation pumps. While 4% isn't much for my house, it's a chunk of money on a half-million dollars.
It took almost a year after the discovery of the secret contracts and a State Auditor's report which also found illegal and improper actions, to rid ourselves of the management team that led us into this debacle. The largest ISPs in the area, including the first two to partner up with the PUD, went out of business and were gobbled up by another outside competitor; costing jobs and an economic drain on the communities' resources. The Commissioners who were supposed to keep a rein on the PUD managers are now up for re-election and facing some tough questions.
The problem with bureaucrats going into business is that, essentially, they don't understand profit and loss. It's all other people's money and if they make a mistake they just raise the rates to cover it. We could have fibered this County up for the money they spent, had they spent that money wisely. Instead they created a NOC they thought they could make profitable (not at $3 million a year to operate they couldn't), they installed fiber to the areas where their managers lived regardless of population density (it turns out the telecoms fears of "cherry picking" were well-founded, but the managers weren't smart enough to do it that way), and they drove jobs and money out of the area.
Had they simply created the infrastructure for the product instead of getting involved in creating subsidies for favored businesses we would have been ok. But that's the problem. Bureaucrats don't make good business people.
So if you don't want to see jobs go away, money disappear and your power rates rise, treat the entrance of government into business with caution. These things are run by politicians, not business people. And it's not their money.
What you say is simply not possible.
Wikileaks, no DNS
Why not allow private companies and governments both to setup wireless networks? Whichever one can do it more efficiently and effectively will win the business. I do not agree that everyone will automatically flock to the "free" wireless networks provided by municipalities, which are just paid for with taxes or even by charging fees. Most people are very willing to pay for superior services, and this kind of competition would only drive the offering of such services.
To me, it sounds like the private companies want to repeat the cable scenario. Namely, they want to be granted an effective monopoly in a municipality to avoid any competition whatsoever. The difference now being that the capital investment of implementing a wireless network is getting cheaper and cheaper, thereby eliminating the high cost of entry (and capital investment) that has been such a barrier in other network access methods. Competition, therefore, has less obstacles on the technical and business side. It seems that the only obstacle left to build up is a governmental restriction.
For some people, like myself, it's utter paranoia.
Muncipal governments are luckily mostly small, but wait until this hits a bigger area. I can just see it now: having to go in front of the municipal broadband board and justify my hosting of an unpopularly sentimented blog, or having to answer to the city council about why I am using so much bandwidth.
Ultimately, government control of information will lead to censorship, and monitoring. Information that is illegal will be pro-actively searched for and destroyed.
The problem with government is that good intentions are behind it all. "We want to cut down on evil monopolies and eliminate the digital divide".
Great. I am happy for that. It's a laudable goal.
Something will happen. Let's say, a parent comes home to discover their teenage daughter has left a runaway note. "Mom, you suck, I am running away to be with my older boyfriend. He loves me!".
Well, of course, here comes "Little Angelic Angela's Law", which will require that local police have access to IM records that pass over their networks if they involve minors. Who wants the government providing Internet access to predators so they can bait helpess impressionable children? "Not with my tax dollars!"
After a bit, that will not be enough. Something else high-profile will happen. A school shooting will be co-ordinated. Or a bomb threat e-mailed in. Or whatever.
And all of the sudden, the rules start piling up. It'll only be a matter of time until citizens decide that they don't want to subsudize Mr. Creepy Pants porn habit, and so, the broadband they provide will filtered against ONLY the most extremely nasty pornography network wide.
Good intentions and government are sometimes a very dangerous mix. Most people involved are great, civic minded people. But. The expansion of government most often leads to very, very, very tricky questions.
It'll be a few years, and a county government will want to take over the network. Why should all these inefficent little networks exist, when they can benefit from econimies of scale? And then the State.
And then it's over. And then, your Internet will be used as a weapon against. It'll be a privelage, like driving. Why should we let people who haven't filed their income taxes on the Internet? It's a privelage of living in the state. Why should people on welfare have access to entertainment sites, it's our tax dollars! Why should people be able to publish websites on this connection, this is for non-commerical use only! The latest e-mail trojan is spreading like wildfire, block all ports in the infected range for the protection of the many!
Of course, all this could happen with private Internet access. But. In my smallish town of 30,000 I have two cable offerings, nearly a dozen DSL offerings, a handful of ISDN offerings, a handful of dial-up offerings, national offerings from AOL and similiar folks, and two wireless ISPs. That's a pretty decent slate of choices.
The temptation to throw myself full fledged onto the free/low-cost municipal broadband is great! It'll be great as long as it's got THIS. And THIS. And THIS. But how long until they get trimmed back, one by one, till what we have is less than what we have now?
Not only is it unwise to let private monopolies in broadband develop because of the excess costs to support lobbiests and bribes to elected officials, it's also unwise to institutionalize private monopolies as the gatekeepers to our information. Democracy may be cranky and ineffient, but the alternatives are much worse.
Unfortunately, free markets rarely seem to work well when it comes to the fringes of personal freedom. Businesses will try to attract the largest market, which doesn't entail catering for people doing things outside of that remit. If you doubt this, look at the number of localities where you can't run a server on any of the available broadband solutions. Right now, the only thing that's keeping that choice open is the FCC's insistance that the ILECs sell the ability to sell DSL, which means groups like SpeakEasy and Earthlink can sell access. The ILECs themselves generally ban the running of servers on their own services, and cable operators are just as draconian, often more so.
With it being difficult to provide high speed services without existing wired infrastructure, that bit of intervention by the FCC is pretty important. But, of course, even with it, there are areas that just aren't served. Until a few months ago, my own area wasn't by virtue of there not being DSL available, period.
Like I said, I don't believe it should be implemented wider than a municipality. When it goes into State or even County level, the potential for abuse appears. Having it on a municipal level helps not just because there's a degree of accountability instilled by the fact the implementation is clearly a last resort, but also in that, at the very least, those in liberal areas will be able to help out those with more draconian terms and conditions, until the ACLU and EFF are able to intervene.
Finally, the risk of a Little Angelic Angela's Law exists anyway. We saw much of this during the late nineties with projects like Carnivore. ISPs will always have to obey the law.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I do not know what type of city you live in...
But in the city I live in (you can see my link if you care) the 'city officials' are just regular Joes off the street. People you know, live near, and work with.
They are not some sort of over-arching group bent on X-Files type conspiracies to get into our personal lives.
Just as I trust the sys admins at work to not give a damn what I am doing (since I am one of the sys admins, I know this to be true) I don't believe the city would give a crap either.
Maybe it's because my tin-foil-hat blew away, and I never bothered looking for it...but I truly do not think that anyone really cares what sites I visit.
No reason to lie.
In some European countries, one may receive cheap services and products from the municipality if it proves the income is lower then a certain limit.
Why not apply the same for internet access? These days, having access to global knowledge is as much as important as food and shelter.
Why? Because the former has to obey the first amendment.
Well, in theory. Like libraries, right? They are government funded, but they filter. Actually, they are required to filter. It's not just an option, it's a requirement.
And what about contemporary community standards, and all that? If the government owns the network, can individuals post religious material? I mean, the governmetn owns the park, and you can't just go down there and put up big posters of Jesus without a permit, right? And even though we are guaranteed the right to assembly, it's not unconditional. We have to get mass permits so there isn't rioting and so that we have a "safe" place to assemble.
So, yeah, the first amendment is great. But in reality, it's not the be all end all of protection.
The difference between the private ISP and the municipal is that on the ISP, it's reactive. Something happens, a warrant is issued, and something else happens. If the government is in the loop from day one, there is absolutely no check. None. It will be pro-active.
Like I said, I don't believe it should be implemented wider than a municipality.
That's great, and I agree. However, the people running things won't always be running things. Schools are run locally, right? Unless the State performs a takeover because it's really a bad school. What happens if the State decides your little network is too slow or bad or whatever, and decides to take it over to manage it properly?
Once you open the door, it really is almost never shut.
A market economy does not provide universal coverage. The quality of service is a bell-curve, some people get awesome service, some get terrible service, most get mediocre service. That's where we are today. The largest majority of people can get either crappy or mediocre service. A small minority can get great service. A smaller minority can get no service.
For these people, maybe we need sometype of government sponsored universal access guarantee. Maybe that's a good idea that should be investigated.
But when the government owns the network, it will be proactive against it's users before long. Muncipalities are seen as responsive, but they aren't always. They can be vindictive. There will be a broadband board. They will call people forward to testify. They will cut people off. They will spy on people. They will release logs to embarrass enemies. They will abuse the power. It will happen. It's a guarantee. There is not a government power that goes unabused.
So the final question comes down to this: would you rather take your chances with private/commerical carriers, or the government.
My choice is simple, and clear. I have economic recourse against business. I have legal recourse against business. I have choices. If my town started offering broadband at sub-market prices, well, that'd be the end of my choice.
Well, that's only because you also can't put up big posters of, well, anything. It would violate basic littering and vandalism statutes. Of course individuals can put up religious materials. It would be against the first amendment for them to be refused, especially on the basis that the material in question is religious.
Now, the government itself will not be able to put up religious materials, but this is merely the same principle that says that a state school that actively promotes religion, via organized school prayer etc, is violating the constitution, but a school that bans private (ie individuals chosing for themselves without encouragement from the school establishment) prayer is violating the constitution too.
I'm tired of this one coming up. There seems to be a lot of people who quite deliberately "misunderstand" and mis-state the whole seperation of church and state thing in order to feed the persecution complex of modern Christians. Give it a rest, please. If the government with access to state or federal funds bans you using public infrastructure available to everyone from using it to promote your religion, then that government is violating the constitution and needs a kicking. And you can bet the ACLU and half a million church groups will be right over it when it does.
Nonsense. If a private ISP bans you from using your connection to promote or service your religion, there's no come back whatsoever. No warrants, nothing. You can either suck it, or leave it, and too bad if nobody else in the area thinks differently to them.
If a municipal ISP does the same thing, you'll be able to get a warrant within hours to change the situation.
Then I'd disagree with it, same as if the State determined that Earthlink was doing a bad job and tried to take them over. This isn't really a reason to oppose municipal ISPs.
I'm lucky that today I have options. I have options because BellSouth finally decided it would be in their best interest to introduce DSL to my neighbourhood (we were too far from the exchange, so this involved them building a relay close by), and the FCC has forced BellSouth to let free-as-in-speech ISPs like Earthlink (there's an irony there, I'll get to it in a moment) and others access to their infrastructure. This means I am, today, allowed to operate a server. This situation didn't exist a few months ago, and the further I'd have gotten from Stuart, the less likely a viable broadband via DSL would have appeared.
My "other choice" would have been Adelphia, a company with draconian (from the point of view of what I want to use the service for) terms and conditions that I found unacceptable when I read them. A month or two ago, this was my only choice. And if the big bad government hadn't intervened, the choice would have been between two providers, Adelphia and BellSouth, both of whom have draconian terms and c
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Spoken like someone who's never had to deal with the digital divide. It *is* real, especially in rural areas. Without government subsidy or initiative, there is an excellent chance that many communities in our state (NE) will never see an improvement in offered digital services. There simply isn't enough population density for any company to deliver in a cost effective way. Continuing (or restarting) education is a real priority to help people that have lost access to 'blue collar' jobs, and that would otherwise be suckling from the taxpayer's teat. High speed internet access is key to cost effectively providing retraining. Go hang out in Salem, Nebraska for a day or two, and let me know how satisfactory you find the Internet service to be, after you are done paying long distance charges for 19.2K dial up.
The government funds libraries, the government should fund high-speed internet. Make people get an internet card the way they get a library card, pay for high usage the way they pay for late fees, seems fairly straight-forward to me. Libraries are closing due to lack of interest- shut down five real libraries to open one lower-cost digital library.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All