WASHINGTON-More than 60 organizations have signed a letter supporting municipal broadband systems.
“Municipalities have a long history of providing necessary services for citizens and stimulating local businesses. In the 20th century municipalities built power plants and telephone lines when private services did not move fast enough,” reads the letter. “Municipalities have a long history of spending money to benefit their citizens and encourage business development. Municipalities across the country have invested public money in convention centers, health clinics and community colleges not to make money, but to bring business opportunities, healthcare and education to their citizens. They should have the same opportunity to offer public hot spots and broadband access.”
The letter was released Tuesday afternoon at a Capitol Hill seminar sponsored by the New America Foundation.
“Municipal broadband systems provide a necessary means of bringing broadband to many rural communities and poorer urban neighborhoods that lack broadband access or have only one provider. Without the possibility of municipal deployment, these communities will continue to suffer as businesses and residents move to better-connected areas,” said Free Press, a media reform group, in a statement.
This is the theory behind the most-recognized municipal project being developed in Philadelphia.
“Even if there was 100-percent coverage, it is too expensive,” said Dianah Neff, chief information officer for the City of Philadelphia.
In addition to Philadelphia, the congressional seminar highlighted several projects across the nation by municipalities building unlicensed wireless networks to bridge the digital divide.
While there is a common theme of connecting citizens to the Internet at high speeds, how to get there varies widely, the panelists said.
As the idea evolves, “we need to get to a place where there is no one-size-fits-all but there is some consistency,” said Greg Richardson, founder and president of Civitium, a consulting firm aimed at municipalities.
Critics of municipal wireless plans have often said services mainly benefit middle- and high-income citizens and are not as fast as wired access. “Speed is not as important as ubiquity,” said Michael Calabrese, vice president of the New America Foundation.
Sascha Meinrath, co-founder and project coordinator of Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network, cautioned municipalities against contracting for a proprietary system because those systems often are not flexible. Besides, Meinrath said, it is impossible to know what capabilities wireless will have in five years.
One of the benefits of a citywide wireless network, mobility, could also be a challenge in the coming years, said Civitium’s Richardson, warning that cities need to start thinking now what they will do when their citizens want them to connect together.
“What happens in this whole debate when we start to see cities link together the networks they have built on a completely separate basis? I can argue that metro wireless today looks like cellular in 1981-pockets of service with different providers,” said Richardson. “Is it OK today to say to the incumbents that we know our community interests best, and we are serving those interests and then move outside and start participating in a network that is national or global in scale? At that point is it about community interest or does it look more competitive?”
