Slashdot Mirror
Municipal Broadband Projects Spread Across U.S.
Mediacitizen writes "Media rights group Free Press has just unveiled an online broadband map showing the vast extent to which publicly supported 'Community Internet' projects have overtaken towns across the country. Hundreds of communities now have municipal broadband systems on the drawing board, despite aggressive lobbying efforts by big telephone and cable companies to derail these projects. The national map shows Community Internet is spreading like a prairie fire."
That's nice and all, but for most states it is at most 4 or 5 municipalities. How many thousands are in the US total? Plus, what is the impact on local taxes of providing "free" broadband. Personally, I'd rather have some free market competition to drive prices down.
"As you say - certain behaviors minimize the HIV risk and writing Slashdot tripe on Friday night is by far the most secu
I'm sad my city voted down Utopia. Qwest sent every one of their lobbyists out to stop this plan of FTTH for every home and business in the city. They argued it would fail and cost the cities money. But if it failed, then the fiber plan would go out to the highest bidder. Obviously, Qwest could have afforded it had they known it would fail....but they knew it wouldn't fail. So they had to stop it.
Luckily other cities voted for it. Already some are offering cheap plans for 15MB down and up, with businesses getting 30 MB down and up.
. . . is hereby proven to not always be a bad thing. Historic biases not withstanding.
The internet is to the modern age what books were to those who came before. In the past, you could be intelligent and educated if your family could afford a fairly large, private library, stocked with the expected classics. Or if you had access to one somehow, usually through a university.
The advent of public libraries allowed common people access to the educational tools and knowledge base once held only by the social elite. This lies at the heart of the American Dream - people who labor for little or nothing can raise children who, through public education and public libraries, know a more prosperous life as their inborn potential allows. The social and financial potential of their parents no longer truly mattered.
Today, almost anything you could want to learn exists on the internet, from home repairs to getting a foundation in some of the most advanced scientific research mankind does. Not having this access leaves you at a serious disadvantage to those who do have it. A modern city of any signifigance does not exist without a public library at its center somewhere, and, if society acts with the same wisdom as before, ways will be found to bring the internet readily to the masses. Civic access to the internet is, in this context, the only truly logical way to go.
Besides, Orson Scott Card predicted civic net access in Ender's Game. You wanna argue against the guy?