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Bill Would Reverse Bans On Municipal Broadband
Yuppie writes "A bill introduced to the House this week would overturn bans that currently exist in several states that forbid cities and towns building and deploying their own broadband networks. The big telecoms may not be be too happy about the bill, however: 'The telecoms have historically argued that municipalities that own and operate — or even build and lease — broadband networks could give themselves preferential treatment. The Act anticipates that argument with a section on "competition neutrality." Public providers would be banned from giving themselves any "regulatory preference," which should create a level playing field for all broadband providers. Municipalities interested in getting into the broadband business would also have to solicit feedback from the private sector on planned deployments.' The full text of the bill (pdf) is available from Rep. Boucher's website."
how the FUCK is that any different to what telecoms do NOW? i bet at&t give themselfs preferential treatment on lines they install to. what a bunch of 2 faced cockheads.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
If an ISP decided it would be cool to allow uncapped transfer over their network (ie, no cost of switching to another ISP), would that be considered preference?
I really have mixed feelings on this. On one hand, it'd be nice to actually get something cool like this for my tax dollars. On the other, I definitely don't want to see my city out-compete our wonderful local ISPs. If/when they became the only game in down, what's their incentive to maintain the networks? Will Joe Cityadmin give a rat's butt if I call to complain about an outage? And above all else, do I really want the government (even the friendly local variety) being my gateway to the Internet? I have nightmares of hearing a prosecuting attorney saying something like "our city access records indicate you posted anti-government statements to a communist website called Dotslash." Maybe that's unlikely, but tell me honestly you can't hear a mayor explaining how his city's network will be "a safe place for our children to play thanks to our new monitoring and filtering system" to thunderous applause. If there's a vibrant ecosystem of private competition in an area, great. If not...
Help me out here. Do I root for the cities to undercut big telco (whom I customarily hate on general principles), or for private enterprise to win out over the government's desire to protect me from myself?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
As long as it's not paid for by the tax-payer I don't see the problem. Otherwise it's just a waste.
So, if I understand this properly, the telecoms don't want municipalities to give themselves "preferential treatment". That makes sense.
Wait a second. Are these the same telecoms that want to be able to sell "preferential treatment" at the detriment of everyone else? As a matter of fact, I think they are.
The only possible conclusion I can draw from this is as follows: it's okay for large companies to fuck people over, but governments damn well better... not. Or something.
What the telecoms need to realize is that the governments have been fucking us over for centuries, if not longer, to the point that they've nearly perfected it to a (very perverse) form of art. The telecoms can't hope to compete, though that doesn't seem to be stopping them.
I own itburns.net. What should I put there?
Of course the incumbent monopolies don't want competition from municipalities! They know their current services are miserable, that we don't have any other choice, and that there are a lot of well run, responsive, municipal utilities out there!
I live where I can choose between one of two local telco monopolies for bad Internet service: the phone company or the cable company. They don't really compete. Businesses have to go with DSL to get a static IP address and the privilege of running any servers. Home users go with the cable company because they already have cable television and the download speeds are marginally faster. Neither company has any connection whatsoever to the community, aside from extracting subscription fees and demanding cable right of ways. Both are widely despised.
In contrast, our local publicly owned water and electric utilities are responsive, provide excellent service, have a focus on low rates, and actively solicit community input, and (oddly enough) are widely respected.
If the water and electrical utility would provide the same sort of community oriented service for Internet that it now provides for water and electricity, I'd sign up in a heartbeat.
There is, in fact, nothing to stop them from doing so right now. I live where there are no laws banning municipally owned data networks. But that brings me to this bill: although it would explicitly allow such networks, when I read the Slashdot summary my first concern was about the kinds of requirements it places on the municipalities. For example, soliciting input from local businesses (which might be served by such a utility) would make good business sense, but requiring discussions with the ILEC and cable company would seem silly. Fortunately the bill looks very clean and merely appears to mandate community involvement -- which is appropriate for a community network.
I strongly recommend reading the bill. It easy to understand and only takes a minute.
By the way: I see little reason to regulate publicly owned utilities any differently than the existing monopolies.
Of course what I'd really like to see are the physical lines condemned and handed over to local government with the provision they allow any service provider who meets appropriate qualifications sell services over those lines. But since that won't happen, and would be a bit thorny in practice anyway, this bill seems like a reasonable step in the right direction.
In the long run, the only thing that's going to materially improve high speed Internet service for most of us is some interest by the Congress and President in improving the situation. As it is, without competition, without any prodding from the powers that be, and given the practicalities of constructing new networks, the monopolies see no reason to improve and it's too risky for anyone else. So here's hoping for more active government motivation against the problem come 2008.
Ya know, I keep thinking about the Constitution's mandate to build postal roads, and I'm still having trouble understanding why the national government is not the primary interstate ISP, and why the state and local governments are not the primary state and local ISPs.
I understand the dangers in letting the government bureaucracy develop cutting edge tech, but, if the state is always so bad with infrastructure tech, why aren't more bridges falling down every year?
joudanzuki, with reservations
Here in Stockholm, there is a city owned company called Stokab, they build and own fibers to city owned apartment buildings as well as coop/condo buildings that sign a contract with the company. This company only owns and maintains the fibers, another company, called OpenNet, operates the fiber network. The actual services are provided by private companies, who are allowed equal access to the network. I have a choice between about 8 ISP's (with speeds between 10 and 100 Mbps both downstream and upstream, costing about 300 SEK (32/$45)/month for 100/100 Mbps), 4 VoIP providers, and (only) 2 TV providers, all operating over the fiber.
I wager the future of public internet access will be a combined effort of private and public initiatives. Take for example the town of Brookline, MA, which recently implemented the nations first border-to-border wireless internet access system. It was an initiative based in the town, organized by the local government, but implemented by a private firm (Strix Systems I believe) to get a professional infrastructure in place. Although it's a pay service for most homes, public hotspots exist in parks, recreational areas, and some public housing. In short, with this bill I think we can at least look forward to more systems like this cropping up, which blur the line between municipal implementation and private enterprise. In the end, it means more choice for the consumer and more pervasive internet access for the people themselves.
Why don't we go ahead and put all goods and services in the hands of the government, because everything would be cheaper, right? Because they're not operating for a profit? I don't want to pay for your broadband, or anyone else's, with my tax dollars. Nor do I want my Internet regulated by those who brought us the PATRIOT act, the DMV, and the IRS. The government is terrible at managing cost-effective solutions to anything because they're spending other people's money. Take this million-dollar outhouse, for example: http://www.jldr.com/oh1mill.html . "The whole project is loaded with Park Service overhead. The agency already has spent $860,000 for design and construction supervision teams. In all, the job could end up costing taxpayers more than $6 million." It's a four-holer outhouse with no running water. The worst argument for municipal broadband that I've heard is that it helps the poor who can't afford Internet access. I suppose we'll be buying them laptops with WiFi, too. The people that benefit most from municipal broadband are the people that can afford it but don't want to pay. If you want Internet access, pay for it. It's a luxury item that didn't exist in the public's perception fifteen short years ago. Don't levy taxes on the poor who can't afford or need a MySpace page so you can read Slashdot for free.
You can make the same argument about public schools ("I don't have kids," or "my kids go to private school,"), state universities (ibid), the FAA ("I don't fly."), public roads ("I don't drive."), the National Science Foundation ("I'm a religious loon who doesn't 'believe in' science."), public libraries ("Theft from the publishers! Er, I mean, Won't someone think about the poor starving authors?"), the EPA ("Toxic sludge is good for you!"), the NRC ("I trust private industry 100% where nuclear power plants are concerned, because private industry would never cut corners or skimp on safety to save a buck."), the DOL ("No employer would ever try to fuck me over or take advantage of me."), etc.
Shall I continue?
You may not use all of the services your tax dollars pay for, and neither do I, but when those tax dollars go to something that is actually useful and beneficial to the public (as opposed to pork projects, contractor "waste"/theft, etc.) what is your reason for objecting? Besides general short-sightedness, selfishness and/or greed? Especially when services are provided that private industry can't supply, won't supply for whatever reason, or might even attempt to block in order to maintain a monopolistic stranglehold?