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Texas Wireless Ban Has Failed
chip rosenthal writes "The effort to ban municipal networks in Texas has failed. Texas House Bill 789 originally had provisions to ban muni wireless networks. The Senate passed a significantly rewritten version, without a ban. A conference committee failed to reach agreement, so the bill died when the Texas legislature adjourned this weekend."
Close call. The attempt to forbid cities and towns from offering wireless services was seriously misguided.
Public wireless is like roads and street lights. Like roads, public wireless access enables economic development. When a road is paved, houses and businesses spring up around it. When an urban area has street lighting, business and civic life continues into the night.
Most streets aren't toll roads, and street lights don't have a fee per block. These services are generally accepted to provide public benefit above and beyond the revenue they would bring if they relied on fee-for-service funding.
Networking is in an early stage, like street lights were a long time ago. Cities and towns ought to be able to make their own decisions about what will bring economic development to their area. Each municipality makes its own decisions about roads and public transportation. Similarly, the decision about whether and how to provide wireless services should be a local decision. We don't want to *prevent* cities and towns from choosing to provide wireless as a service that will incent additional economic activity. We don't want to mandate one model, for the whole state, in an early stage of development.
How many want to bet that it will be back in the next session? The persistence of corporate greed should never be underestimated.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
As a Texan, I'm glad that the last bits of that last session were spent trying to do more important things like finding funding for schools. The whole thing seemed like entity was trying to slip it through so when it was found (and called out) the thing was pretty much dead in the water. I am glad that they didn't mess with the current system of telecommunications- one of my favorite things about Texas is the pretty fast broadband that I have in a pretty rural area. Touching anything might kill the golden goose.
Open Source Sushi
Internet access is not, never has been, and should not be considered a basic public service.
The Internet is a medium of communication for individuals and groups, organizations, and companies, people and assemblies of all kinds. As a medium of communication, putting ownership and control of access to it in the hands of government is a very very bad idea that relies on a false idea that the government can be trusted because it is the government which gives us rights and therefore will protect them on any service it provides.
This nation, as with all other nations of humans, has a long history of illustrating just the opposite. Government descends from our basic rights as humans, not the other way around. We make right of our right to free will to choose to organize and co-operate under governance, not to exist at the leisure of it.
Governments inherently being creatures of our darker tendencies and mob rule, are not and never have been given inherently towards respecting or protecting our rights, but ever seek to intrude upon them and limit them.
Yet despite all the socialist alarm bells about the present president turning this nation into the bastard offspring of Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany, the same people all too often seem to think that government should provide the conduit through which we express ourselves. If this be the case, then let us turn over all the printing presses, computers, word processors, typewriters, phones and phone service and paper supplies and all other mediums of communication right now to the government.
Anyone trust that the government will distribute these mediums as best fits our rights and needs or would they do as they more often do, limit, choke, control?
Internet service by government is to put that access in the hands of politicians and politics. Two things that should be kept as far away and have as little contact as possible with it. Putting my tax dollars on this is tantamount to forcing me to contribute to something destined to become embroiled ina civil rights clusterf*ck of all time in the near future. Let us cut to the chase and not go there in the first place.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
And that's reasonable, because such a ban would be both positive and negative. Positive in that a local government would have been able to use taxpayers money to compete with perfectly adequate private services, but bad in that the fact is, with dumbass port blocking and ridiculous terms and conditions, and a lack of coverage in many areas, the private sector needs its backside kicked. We still lack "IP common carriers".
What was needed was not a ban but regulation. Specific circumstances in which a local authority would be allowed to enter the market. Restrictions on what it could do, with privacy only eroded to the minimum required to comply with State and Federal law) and with subsidies capped at a per-body maximum needed to be drawn up, with serious penalties for breaches. A specific minimum standard for private IP providers to supply at reasonable prices above which a local network would be deemed unnecessary, which should include an unfiltered, non-NAT, IP routing service set at a price level equal to its other popular consumer broadband offerings.
By doing this, the legislature would have let municipal broadband be a threat only to telecommunication companies unwilling to play fair and provide access. It would also have ensured that municipalities would always have an escape route against poor entrenched infrastructure companies.
This has been promoted too much in "black and white" terms (I refer to the use of that imagery to highlight absurdly contrasting views, as in "You're either for me or against me" type rationale, not the popular nick name for monochrome television), and this, perhaps, endangers the chance of the right approach being made. People often believe that compromise is a sign of weakness, and it is, but you shouldn't always mistake solutions that form a middle ground and answer everyone's concerns for compromise. Often they're the right answer nobody wants to hear.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
"Public wireless is like roads and street lights."
No it's not. The argument for cities controlling roads is that it's a large resource that should be controlled by one entity for efficiency. Similar arguments are made for power and phone line. Wireless, on the other hand, lends itself well to competition. New technologies, such as WiMAX, lend themselves well to low cost competitve wireless market.
Muni wireless will kill that, and you'll be left with whatever underfunded half-assed, system your local govt decides is best for you.
Vote for Pedro
Providing free wireless isn't going to suddenly make the normal ISPs go into bankruptcy. A free wireless network would be nice if you have a laptop in a park or something, but it isn't going to cut it for home use.
First of all, the security is terrible on wireless networks. I would not allow anyone in my house to connect their PC to a wireless city-wide network. You would have to lock down the PC to the point where it was barely usable anyway.
Secondly, you would still want a home network in most cases. Unless you set up a PC to act as your wireless access point, and made it into a hardcore firewall/router you wouldn't have the kind of security or network design you wanted. It wouldn't be very convenient to have all of your devices floating around in a public access WAN.
Last but not least is speed. I don't think I'll be getting the 1M download rate I currently enjoy with cable on a municiple wireless connection.
If the city is sellign this as a way for the average user to have an internet connection they are sadly mistaken. They might say it is as easy as connecting, which it is. The people that would want the simplicty of connection are the same ones that don't have a clue how to secure themselves, therefore they would be worse off in the end.
/. ++
Let's say they maintain administration of it, because it is "theirs". Do you really like the idea of the same ISP that you are using also paying the Chief of Police? Wouldn't that lead to a terrific conflict of interest sometimes?
How could there be multiple providers? There really isn't much room for effective sharing of physical space by competing 802.11 transceivers. While it probably wouldn't push Starbucks off the air, you certainly would not have Verizon buying pole space to have their transceiver next to the municpal one - this would be an enforced monopoly because the frequencies are a finite resource. So much for "competition." As for keeping the major providers out of it, whom exactly do you think is going to get the contract to provide the service, anyway?
All of this is just a fun way to take your money for a service that you probably won't get to use - because it will service the downtown area. So unless you live and/or work there, you just get to pay for it in your taxes. Think they are going to tax the downtown people extra to pay for it and not everyone else? Come on, you did think that, didn't you?
I know, it's a hard concept to grasp, that "respect" thingy... But try it, it's fun, and it has its rewards.
Sorry if I'm sounding bitter, but damn...
Try replacing 'internet' in your statement with 'post office' and see how absurd it is. Providing public access to the internet is NOT the same as controlling internet access. People are free to get their internet connection from a private enterprise, and if the government begins instituting draconian laws governing the use of public internet access, they will.
Spoken like a true zealot... never-the-less, I shall try.
1. The bill would have PREVENTED local government from offering these services. The fact that it failed to pass is , in no way shape fashion or form, a mandate that local governments SHOULD provide it.
2. In the current system, a voter referendum is still required for any city to proceed. Remind me again how we've extended the power of government beyond previous limits?
3. Most muni broadband/wireless projects are funded via bond-issue, open access fees and user subscription fees. Relatively few of them rely on tax dollars to build or maintain the system. Those that are funded by tax dollars almost universially are required (by law) to get voter approval before work can even begin. You do vote, right? You know, that thing we do to determine who governs us, and what they are allowed to do?
4. This is not an issue of 'The Government' trying to trample the rights of 'The Individual' or 'Free Enterprise'. It is an issue of preventing 'Big Government' (state) from preventing 'Little Government' (local) government trying to spur economic development (which is in its own interest as well) by providing services that provide value to citizens and businesses, but aren't lucrative enough to interest private enterprise (in this case, limited monopolies... I notice you didnt scream too much about them manipulating the individual by creating artifical scarcity/demand).
5. Take off your tinfoil hat and realize that not all aspects of government are bad or irrational. It is true that our form of government is subject the excesses of it's representatives, but it will also adjust itself (given the opportunity and an interested populace) - which is better than most.
This was an arbitrary law limiting municipal governments' ability to provide an important service in an underserved area. It takes nothing away from constituents except for their right to decide how their corner of the world is governed. It EXPANDED the grasp of government, instead of narrowing it. It artifically limited the rights of the local populace to choose their relationship to their government at the bequest of major commercial interests.
6. Before posting on an issue you obviously know nothing about, take an hour to familiarize yourself with it JUST A BIT. Like most things in life/government there is typically a great deal more involved than is immediately apparent, and releveant to your personal agenda. I li ve in texas, and I know what this law meant, and you'll forgive me if I prefer to be able to choose for myself what I allow my local government to do with my own vote!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but all this means is that municipalities are not PROHIBITED from setting up wireless networks?
That means that, if you don't like the idea of a municipal wifi network in your area, you can STILL fight it via political activism in your local government?
I've seen a number of arguments in this thread about why muni-wifis are a bad idea (inefficiency, discourage competition, not an essential function of government, not a "need" of all citizens, etc), but I haven't read any actual advocacy for a state-wide ban prohibiting munipilatities from deciding for themselves whether to offer wi-fi or not... So, much of the "hubub" here seems misplaced.
Texas is in the middle of a school funding crisis, and in July the courts will likely order drastic changes unless the Governor calls a special session.
Special sessions are supposed to address only the issue they are called for, but lobbying interests - read SBC - will no doubt find a way to get their favorite legislation passed. With only 30 days in each special session pro-freedom groups will have to lobby both the legislature and the governor ahead of time if they want to block such legislation.
Uh, because they can do it better?
Consider, if the town doesn't provide competative service then no one will use it. Just because the Telco's exercise monopoly or near monopoly control over local telephone service does not entitle them to a monopoly over broadband as well.
In fact, the Telcos aren't providing adequate broadband service now, because if the were the municiple option wouldn't even be under consideration. That should be self-evident to everyone.
Plus, this is an issue of local control. Citizens have the greatest amount of control over their smallest, most local, entities -- in this case towns. I would expect that only towns that want their local government to provide broadband will actually go ahead and do so.
And this is the way it should be.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."