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."

Comments

preferential treatment

[timmarhy]

"'The telecoms have historically argued that municipalities that own and operate -- or even build and lease -- broadband networks could give themselves preferential treatment"

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.

Re:preferential treatment

[Divebus]

Well, SOMEONE has to give the telecoms some competition, if nothing else to keep them from raping the public. The U.S. is already the laughingstock of the planet for how behind our telephone systems and ISPs are. It used to be the other way around - the U.S. telephone system under AT&T was the best in the world (for what it was). Now everyone else is running rings around us with bandwidth and features while the U.S. telecoms are artificially limiting what they deliver. Go Munies!

Not just big telecoms

[Just Some Guy]

The big telecoms may not be be too happy about the bill, however

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?

Re:Not just big telecoms

[gowen]

what's their incentive to maintain the networks?

The same thing that's their incentive to maintain all the other things local government provides: did the municiapal fire department become lazy because they've driven the private fire brigades of the 19th century out of business? Contrary to what they seem to teach in US schools, the profit motive is not the sole force for good in the known universe.

Re:Not just big telecoms

[Daniel Dvorkin]

The same thing that's their incentive to maintain all the other things local government provides: did the municiapal fire department become lazy because they've driven the private fire brigades of the 19th century out of business? Contrary to what they seem to teach in US schools, the profit motive is not the sole force for good in the known universe.

Absolutely. I really get tired of the unquestioned assumption that businesses will be more responsive to their customers than governments will to their citizens. The fact of the matter is, once a business gets over a certain size -- and the big telcos definitely fit into this category -- they don't give a shit what Joe Consumer thinks, because they don't have to. They're omnipresent, and if one or ten or a thousand customers get tired of their lousy service, tough; they'll never notice the losses, and the customers either have no choice (as is usually the case with telcos, of course) or the "choice" of dealing with some other megacorporation that's just as bad (as is the case with cell phone companies.) Personally, I'd expect a lot better service from a city-owned ISP than from some Not-So-Baby-Bell that's headquartered halfway across the country and has most of its employees halfway around the world, and makes more money in a week than my city council spends in a year.

Re:Not just big telecoms

[Anonymous Coward]

It's quite simple actually: Whenever there is a practically undividable resource, regulation is necessary if the government doesn't manage the resource completely. You can't have three competing roads from A to B and you can't allow one private entity to freely exploit a monopoly on getting from A to B. The situation is similar with last mile network access. Multiple competing metropolitan and wide area networks are economically feasible, but the free market tends to leave people with only one choice for last mile access (or two by companies which are not in the same primary market). Regulating equal access to the last mile has proved quite successful in the EU, which started out with government owned telcos.

Correct me if I'm wrong...

[Elyscape]

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.

Municipal broadband works well in Sweden

[SwedishPenguin]

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.