Chicago Tribune | Debate sizzles on the wiring of U.S. towns
Here we have municipalities fighting to get involved in providing broadband services as a public utility. The private providers for these services already exist, obviously. I guess the municipalities see the money to be made. See a contradiction here? Where profits are to be made, munis want to get into the business world. But for things that require taxing and spending for the general welfare--street construction, maintenance and lighting, policing, building code and nuisance-type law enforcement--munis are content to turn things over to HOAs. This is a reversal of the way things are supposed to be in a liberal democracy, isn't it? In any event, it seems the ISPs are getting protection from state legislatures:
Kutztown [Pennsylvania], with a population of 5,000, had grown frustrated that its local telecom providers were slow to offer residents, and especially businesses, the kind of high-speed Internet access commonly available in urban centers. So Kutztown launched its communications network in 2002, financed by a bond offering and a loan from its municipal electric utility. The Spostos' firm now buys business-class Internet service for $40 a month. That is about half the price paid by businesses in neighboring communities for comparable service, but at a slightly slower speed, provided by regional Service Electric Cablevision. Kutztown uses a broadband fiber-optic network that allows faster connections than those customarily available from either DSL or cable modem. But if the country's telephone and cable TV companies have their way, cities and towns eager to emulate Kutztown will find it difficult, if not impossible, to establish municipal communications utilities. This spring, telecom giants SBC Communications and Verizon Communications, along with cable providers such as Comcast and Mediacom Communications, lobbied 12 state legislatures--including Illinois'--to urge passage of laws restricting municipalities from building such networks. Fourteen states, including Wisconsin and Missouri, limit or prohibit cities and towns from pursuing such enterprises.
3 comments:
This piece is as ignorant as any I've ever seen on the topic. The Telcos are doing a miserable job of supplying service, and there are already 25,000+ WISP (Wannabe Wireless Internet Service Providers) offering service. That fragmented market requires customers to pay for individual accounts by different vendors, all within the same neighborhood, if you need mobility. You could pay $100/mo for wireless services in Chicagoland.
And, when you think of small-town America, where population is sparse, Telcos and cable providers simply don't provide broadband services...at ANY price. When a small town or area can buy a single T1 line at, say, $1000/mo, and share it out to several hundred subscribers (through economical wireless access points), each paying (say) $50/mo, citizens are served where the large communications vendors will never go unless there is a federal mandate for Universal Service.
Learn something about your topic before you post such drivel.
Why HOAs
"Where profits are to be made, munis want to get into the business world. But for things that require taxing and spending for the general welfare--street construction, maintenance and lighting, policing, building code and nuisance-type law enforcement--munis are content to turn things over to HOAs. This is a reversal of the way things are supposed to be in a liberal democracy ..."
Your clairvoyant statement reminds me of something Shu Bartholomew wrote, a couple of years ago, in a discussion about the Nevada ombudsman's office:
"Kind of ironic when you think about it, really. At first the government mandates associations as a means of shunting off their responsibilities onto the private sector, then they start a new 'office' to deal with the problems created by trying to duck their duties in the first place, which in turn becomes the fastest growing bureaucracy in the government. Have we gained anything?" [hoaa, Nov. 24, 2003]
Ah, the civility-challenged left. The problem here is not bad service by the existing broadband providers. As the article notes, Kutztown is duplicating service already provided by Service Electric. Only 30% of the households in Kutztown even bothers to subscribe to the city's fiber optic system (see http://www.municonsortium.com/muni_021704.shtml). We lived in Exeter Twp., PA, from 1990 to 1994. That's not far from Kutztown, except a whole lot smaller. We had cable TV. I'm writing this from a remote exurban location that has no telephone company broadband from SBC. Guess what? I have a cable TV modem that gives me perfect broadband access. So spare me this corporate bad guy nonsense. The people of Kutztown already had broadband, before the city decided to go into the business.
And that's what it is--a business. The reason 14 states have banned local broadband (a practice that was upheld by the USSC in 2004 in Nixon v. Missouri Municipal League), with many more considering it, is that this is unfair competition, and totally unnecessary. Check out the latest reports on municipal finance at the National Municipal League, done by Mike Pagano. You will see that cities are greatly increasing fee-for-services revenues wherever they can. Why? Other sources of revenue (such as sales and income tax) are either flat or not available, and they don't want to raise property taxes (increases come from higher assessed valuations, though). On the other side of the balance sheet, wages and benefits for city employees continue to climb. In short: munis are getting into business ventures, including broadband, for the money.
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