Should Municipalities Get in the Wi-Fi Business?

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
Reply-To: <dewayne () warpspeed com>
Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 11:52:24 -0700
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Should Municipalities Get in the Wi-Fi Business?

Should Municipalities Get in the Wi-Fi Business?
Wireless wonder at a fraction of the cost
- Adam Werbach
Friday, April 15, 2005

In the coming weeks, the city of San Francisco will request proposals
for a plan for a community broadband network -- a network that can
provide the people of San Francisco a blisteringly fast connection to
the Internet at a fraction of the cost of Comcast and SBC.

That's the good news: The technology is here, it's cheap and cities
across the country are doing it already.

But here's the bad news: During the next year of planning, you're going
to be bombarded with messages about how the incompetent, bloated city
bureaucracy is going to chase businesses from our town and waste
millions of dollars on a fool's quest. It's not surprising; the cable
and phone companies have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into a
wired infrastructure that the people of San Francisco can leapfrog for
a fraction of the cost.

Today, high-speed Internet service in San Francisco costs too much.
Each month, San Franciscans pay about $50 for a high-speed Internet
connection from either SBC or Comcast. In some neighborhoods, like
Bayview-Hunters Point, it's not even universally available at that
outrageous price.

Mayor Gavin Newsom, recognizing that a fast connection to the Internet
is critical for economic development and public safety, set a goal of
getting every resident access to a high-speed Internet connection.
Supervisor Tom Ammiano had already created an initiative to study the
feasibility of a municipal broadband system. Last month, the San
Francisco Public Utilities Commission took up the cause by taking the
lead on the project with the city's Department of Telecommunications
and Information Services, paving the way for community broadband to be
another utility, like water and sewer services. The pieces are in
place.

Here's how it could work: San Francisco would use the streetlight poles
that it already owns to send wireless Internet signals throughout the
city. The signals are harmless and similar in frequency to your
cordless phone. Using a wireless Internet card on your desktop or
laptop computer, you would tie into the city network, perhaps by
putting a small antenna on your window. You would either pay the San
Francisco Public Utilities Commission or an Internet service provider a
small fee for access to the network that would be many times faster
than current cable-modem or DSL services.

How much would it cost? It depends on which model we use. The city of
Philadelphia will cover a little less than three times the land mass of
San Francisco and will be charging subscribers $16 to $20 a month for
Internet services. We could decide to create enterprise zones --
Chinatown, Bayview- Hunters Point, the Mission -- where access is free.
We could make wireless Internet access free at all libraries, schools
and community centers. With a city network, all these choices are open.

Opponents say that the unfairly subsidized entry of cities into the
broadband arena will ruin the high-functioning free market for
broadband services in the United States. The truth is that the highly
subsidized cable- and-telephone company duopoly lacks competition and
is limiting our economic growth. According to Media Access Project, the
United States ranks 13th among developed nations in access to broadband
and pays more than 10 times as much per megabit of speed as the
Japanese or Koreans. Municipal networks, or even the threat of them,
provide the competition to keep prices low and the quality of service
high.

Community broadband doesn't "crowd out" competitors anymore than the
BART airport extension crowded out airport shuttles and taxicabs from
SFO; even though BART opponents claimed that it would put both out of
business. San Francisco can provide a base level of high-speed service
to its citizens; the cable and telephone companies can focus on
higher-priced commercial applications, or use the city's broadband
infrastructure to help lower their costs.

The unfair competition is not coming from cities such as San Francisco,
but from the incumbent companies who enjoy a wealth of federal and
state tax incentives. The phone companies have had years of
monopolistic protection to establish their market position; to claim
that the entrance of cities will ruin the free market that exists is
specious. There is no free market, so the companies would rather
regulate than compete.

And that's exactly what they're doing. One of the reasons I'm pushing
San Francisco to move as quickly as possible on this initiative is that
the telephone-and-cable lobby has already succeeded in passing state
laws that prohibit 14 states from creating their own municipal
broadband networks. If we don't get San Francisco into this arena soon,
we might lose the chance. Expanding the reach of the public sector in
an era when privatizing and outsourcing are de rigueur is not something
that we should expect will be easy. But the people of San Francisco
deserve the world's fastest and most inexpensive Internet access. Over
the next year, we'll be refining the plan and looking for your support.

Adam Werbach is a member of the San Francisco Public Utilities
Commission who is also launching Progressive Film Club
(www.progressivefilmclub.com).

Page B - 9
URL:  
<http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/04/15/
EDGM7C7UJ11.DTL>


Weblog at: <http://weblog.warpspeed.com>


------ End of Forwarded Message


-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as lists-ip () insecure org
To manage your subscription, go to
  http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/