Telecoms Suing Municipalities That Plan Broadband Access

Law.com has up a review of ongoing and historical cases of telecoms suing municipalities that plan broadband networks. In many cases those same telecoms have spent years ignoring as potential customers the cities and towns now undertaking Net infrastructure projects, only to turn around and sue them. One lawyer who has defended many municipalities in this position says, "This is similar to electrification a century ago when small towns and rural areas were left behind, so they formed their own authorities." Bob Frankston has been writing for years about the financial model of artificial scarcity that underlies the telecoms businss plans. This post gives some of the background to the telecoms' fear of abundance.

Comments

Re:The government?

[RobBebop]

You did not state why you think it's not a necessity.

Security. You can secure water and electricity plants because an attacker would need to have some serious resources at his disposal to knock off a source node from the water and electric grid. With broadband internet, an attack could occur from anywhere in the world that would disable the network. With the network disabled, emergency broadcast signals wouldn't be deliverable (another post mentioned the benefits of land-line phones) and the government would have no way to communicate.

Simply put, broadband cannot be made into a utility until it can be made cheap enough to guarantee that it will be there when it is most important for it to be there... during an emergency.

Having said that... the above is why it *currently* should NOT be considered a necessity. In the future, the technology should be expected to catch up with the needs of a tele-connected society.