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Bill Would Reverse Bans On Municipal Broadband

Posted by Zonk on Sat Aug 04, 2007 01:51 AM
from the everybody-wants-in-on-the-act dept.
The Internet Government Networking Politics
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."
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[+] IT: Chicago Cancels Municipal Wi-Fi Plan 93 comments
thatshortkid writes "The Chicago Tribune is reporting that a proposed plan for municipal wi-fi in Chicago has fallen apart. The story cites contract disputes and the falling price of residential broadband as reasons for the talks collapsing. 'Chicago officials had intended that the city would offer infrastructure, but no cash, to a carrier that would use its own funds to build the network here. EarthLink and AT&T Inc. submitted proposals to the city, but after months of negotiations the parties were unable to reach agreement. The companies sought a commitment from Chicago to be an "anchor tenant," agreeing to pay to use the Wi-Fi network to support city services, but the city declined ... Even if Chicago declines to back a municipal wireless network, city residents soon will gain more Internet connection options. Sprint Nextel Corp. is building a wireless WiMax network here that is due to offer service next spring.'"
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  • preferential treatment (Score:5, Insightful)

    by timmarhy (659436) on Saturday August 04 2007, @01:53AM (#20111365)
    "'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 (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Divebus (860563) on Saturday August 04 2007, @02:05AM (#20111417)
      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!

        • Re:Screw this (Score:4, Informative)

          by Enigma2175 (179646) on Saturday August 04 2007, @11:43AM (#20113913) Homepage Journal
          The problem is that the municipalities are granting monopolies on last-mile transport to private enterprise instead of handling it themselves. If I have to pay Comcast or Qwest for my connection, they insist that they make a profit off of it. However, if my city owns the network all they demand is that they break even on it. My current connection is 15 Mb/s symmetrical fiber. It costs me about $36/mo. Previously I was paying Comcast $45-$50/mo for a 3Mb/512Kb connection. Yes, it cost the city some money to lay the fiber but now that it is installed the maintenance is fairly cheap and EVERY house in the city has a connection to the network. There are multiple service providers for data, phone and TV so there is no monopoly pricing, if you don't like your current provider you can switch. You can rant about government pork, but the local government generally does a better job of controlling overhead and grift than the federal. You are criticizing hypothetical networks but I am sitting on a real one and from my perspective, it is sweet. I am getting way better speeds at a lower price than I was before. Yes, some of my tax dollars had to be used to build the network, but with the monthly cost savings I am coming out ahead. I am generally not for expanded government but where it comes to natural monopolies like utilities and roads, sometimes government does a better job than business.


    • So the customer is essentially the municipality? And the proposed law essentially says they're not allowed to do things for themself at any amount of cost that is better than getting someone else to do it? Even though there would inherently be less cost as there's no profit skimming overhead? Is that right?

      I suppose it's better than the existing law if that just says you can't do anything for yourself.

    • how the FUCK is that any different to what telecoms do NOW?
      The difference is that you have the choice not to pay for the service.
       
      • Well, if you don't vote for your city's government, you are paying for far more expensive projects that you didn't choose to support. As for WiFi, the tax is likely to be dramatically less than at least $60/month that Comcast charges for Internet access.

      • The difference is that you have the choice not to pay for the service.
        You are not required to live in an area covered by municipal WiFi.
      • that depends on how they run it - there's plenty of government services out there that taxes dont' pay for and the consumer pays for directly.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Cathbard (954906)
      As an ex long term telco employee I can confirm that telco's give preferential treatment to corporate "strategic partners" (collusion anybody?) that would boggle your mind. These corporate discounts could never be matched by a municipality due to the scale involved. The amount of pocket pissing that goes on would make your stomach turn but when a telce does it it is is simply called standard business practices. How is a council giving preferential treatment to their customers any different?

  • Commie! (Score:5, Funny)

    by gowen (141411) <gwowen@gmail.com> on Saturday August 04 2007, @01:58AM (#20111387) Homepage Journal
    Goddamn activist legislators preventing ordinary Americans being price gouged by ISPs.

    Don't they know that that's SOCIALISM? And SOCIALISM is not just automatically bad, but Anti-American(TM) even when its not.
  • If an ISP decided it would be cool to allow uncapped transfer over their network (ie, no cost of switching to another ISP), would that be considered preference?
    • No, the question is not so much, what they do with their net. The point is, that municipalities could provide special laws or regulations only for their provider. Say, they don't need to pay a certain fee, or only part of it, or they would be allowed to hang the wires at poles, while other companies are not. Or the municipalities services are made required to use the local provider.

    • Regulatory preference of the sort the USPS enjoys over UPS, FedEx, and DHL, I imagine.

      • Re:what type of "regulatory preference"? (Score:4, Informative)

        by TheRaven64 (641858) on Saturday August 04 2007, @05:45AM (#20112051) Homepage Journal
        Typically this kind of regulatory preference comes with certain extra demands. As I recall, he USPS is the only carrier allowed to take first class mail but they trade off for this is that they are required to provide equal cost delivery for everyone. Here in the UK, Royal Mail deliveries in rural Scotland are subsidised by the cost of stamps in England. The price of a stamp is set at close to an average delivery cost. If you used an unregulated private carrier, then they would charge you more for sending something from London to Scotland than to another part of London.

        The rationale behind this kind of regulation is that communication is vital economic infrastructure, and the flat rate fees make the country as a whole more competitive. When the post office was in charge of telecommunications, they were required to connect a certain percentage of the population each year. A private telecoms company could have just gone after the ones that gave the biggest ROI. This is happening now; you have a lot more options for broadband in Central London, where the population is densest, than in many other areas.

  • The Telecoms want net neutrality to only apply to them.

  • Not just big telecoms (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Just Some Guy (3352) <kirk+slashdot@strauser.com> on Saturday August 04 2007, @02:03AM (#20111409) Homepage Journal

    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 (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gowen (141411) <gwowen@gmail.com> on Saturday August 04 2007, @02:23AM (#20111485) Homepage Journal

      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.

      • The same thing that's their incentive to maintain all the other things local government provides

        The desire to grow the tax base?

        God help us all.

        Fire departments, police, and roads aren't inherently competitive activities. There are some things that make a lot of sense to roll under the government roof. Telecom is extremely competitive, though, and I think that's good for us.

        Let me illustrate another facet: my local government is currently trying to force us to approve a bond issue to pay for a new water park that no one really seems to want. They're doing this by deliberately allowing the m

      • Re:Not just big telecoms (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Daniel Dvorkin (106857) on Saturday August 04 2007, @02:43AM (#20111535) Homepage Journal
        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.
        • "I really get tired of the unquestioned assumption that businesses will be more responsive to their customers than governments will to their citizens"

          So I take it you've never dealt with the IRS, DMV, EPA, or most other government agencies that people have deal with on a regular basis. Even ATT is more customer oriented, and it's just about the worst the private sector has to offer.

          "Personally, I'd expect a lot better service from a city-owned ISP than from some Not-So-Baby-Bell that's headquartered halfwa
          • So I take it you've never dealt with the IRS, DMV, EPA, or most other government agencies that people have deal with on a regular basis.

            No, I deal with them all the time, like everybody else. Well, okay, not the EPA, since I'm not really involved in anything that falls under their jurisdiction -- unless you count separating my garbage for recycling, which, BTW, where I live (Minneapolis) is a service provided by the city, and functions quite smoothly. We have three garbage cans instead of one; we separate

      • 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.

        Yes, like they've done such a good job maintaining bridges [myway.com]. It is not like they have anything more importan [myway.com]

      • The same thing that's their incentive to maintain all the other things local government provides

        The reason the politicians want to provide you with WiFI is because it will buy your vote. In 5 years when the technology is outdated and expensive to maintain, it will be an entirely different matter where it's simply another cost to the taxpayer whether they want it or not.

        Fire departments are a bad analogy, they are required by law to maintain a certain level of service because fire spreads.

    • If/when they became the only game in down, what's their incentive to maintain the networks?

      If/when they became the only garbage collector in town, what's their incentive to maintain the waste disposal trucks?
      If/when they became the only road repairer in town, what's their incentive to maintain roads?
      If/when they became the only etc, etc,etc...

    • Yeah, I'm not a fan of the municipal broadband for the reasons that you stated. From what I've seen monopolies pretty much always such whether it is a corporate or government monopoly. Having the government provide subsidized service is the quickest way I know to kill competition and consoledate broadband providers even more than they already are.

      So if my city was proposing something along those lines I would definitely be against it. At the same time, if a community does decide to provide broadband then t
    • Although it's true that government can be quite lazy at times, we do have the advantage of living in a slightly democratic society, where local officials can be held accountable for how the government operates under their control.

      Private monopolistic utilities are often much harder to control, and at the very worst are criminally negligent. Con Edison in New York City is commonly cited as being an example of this, where they profit greatly, yet return almost no money back to their crumbling infrastructure.
    • 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?

      Personally, the Ron Paul supporter in me says that the Federal government should have no authority to tell the ISP, state, or local governments what they can or cannot do.

      If the local governments wish to have their own municipal ISP then I can justify that because there is nothing in federal constitution
      • I don't know if you're trying to be sarcastic or not. It sounds like you think that the government should simply regulate ISPs. I've never taken any econ. classes, but all you have to do is look around to see that government regulating private industry gives you the worst of both worlds (government providing something as a public service vs. taking a hands off approach and letting the market work itself out). For example, right now most cities provide your sewer/garbage collection as a social service, an

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by 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 la

  • Not really a problem (Score:3, Insightful)

    by drsquare (530038) on Saturday August 04 2007, @02:03AM (#20111413)
    As long as it's not paid for by the tax-payer I don't see the problem. Otherwise it's just a waste.

    • How exactly do you expect a municipal Internet service to be paid for, if not with taxes? Or are you one of those people who expects governments to deliver services paid for by fairy dust and wishes?

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by argiedot (1035754)
        I suppose he means that while the municipality does own and run the service, it charges for it and the charges go to keeping it maintained.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by TheRaven64 (641858)

        It would require an initial investment, which would have to come either from taxes, or from a private finance initiative. A compromise might be a good idea; allow local businesses and residence associations to fund some of the development in exchange for being in the first connected areas.

        Then there's the matter of running costs. This could be done by selling advertising space, although I'm not a huge fan of the concept. It could also be done by offering a premium service. There are a few options for

  • Wait, you mean municipal broadband will give preferential treatment for its own service? The one run by an elected entity, representing the people they serve? The one that won't be profit seeking (other than providing nominal tax dollars to fund other services)? The one whose pricing, serving level, and whatnot would be controlled by the citizenry at the city council level? HOLY COW BATMAN!

    I don't see a SIGN UP button on the article, damn...

    • representing the people they serve? The one that won't be profit seeking (other than providing nominal tax dollars to fund other services)? The one whose pricing, serving level, and whatnot would be controlled by the citizenry at the city council level?
      You must be new.

       

  • Heaven Forbid.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by sieb (749103) on Saturday August 04 2007, @02:25AM (#20111495)
    municipalities get fed up at the empty promises the Telco's give them about getting them wired, and how they can't make money if the municipality does it themselves.. Given how the Telco's already squandered the millions of dollars that were supposed to be used for upgrading broadband, I would be in favor of locking out Telco's all together. Like hell I am going to pay for my city to upgrade its broadband only to hand it over to a corporation to get neutered, all the while they [the telco] will complain that "this setup sucks, if you had let us install it as we promised, it would have been better!"

  • Correct me if I'm wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Elyscape (882517) <elyscape AT gmail DOT com> on Saturday August 04 2007, @02:48AM (#20111551) Homepage
    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.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Winckle (870180)
      I love the use of language, when they do it, it's because they cannot maintain "network neutrality", when someone does it to them, they are being hurt by "preferential treatment".
  • Ya know, I keep thinking about the Constitution's mandate to build postal roads, and I'm still having trouble understanding why the national government is not the primary interstate ISP, and why the state and local governments are not the primary state and local ISPs.

    I understand the dangers in letting the government bureaucracy develop cutting edge tech, but, if the state is always so bad with infrastructure tech, why aren't more bridges falling down every year?

    joudanzuki, with reservations
  • I don't believe the Congress is granted the authority to write laws regulating state treatment of municipal ISPs (I don't see how you could possibly try to shoe-horn this into "regulating inter-state commerce").
    • *shrug* They shoe-horned the banning of marijuana into it.

    • If you buy things over the Internet, they are often shipped from a different state. Thus, the Internet is used for interstate commerce. Therefore, anything connected to the Internet is interstate commerce.

      When it's time to draft Constitution 2.0, that clause needs some serious rewording.

  • Our internet service comes from our light department. Our town has no cable, and DSL covers only about half the town due to it's size. Last year the municipal light dept rolled out WiMax. It's not perfect, but it's damn better than dial-up. Before they went ahead though they had to write a letter to Verizon to get permission to enter the market, presumably due to this law or fear of it. Fortunately Verizon said yes (our town has only 1500 or so homes in it, so they probably didn't care - too busy rolli
  • Interesting that the US is taking a rather regulation-friendly route! In Sweden, anyone can apply to each local municipality to pull your own fiber - and I have never heard anyone being denied that. In rural areas aswell as cities, many municipalities have pulled their own fibers in order to give their areas a improved competitive edge when any of the main telcos have not been up to the task quick enough. The business model many have choosen is a completely open one; the offer to lease dark fibers, wavelen

  • Municipal broadband works well in Sweden (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SwedishPenguin (1035756) on Saturday August 04 2007, @05:44AM (#20112043)
    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.

  • What ever happened to state's rights? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by j1mmy (43634) on Saturday August 04 2007, @07:48AM (#20112503) Journal
    Which part of the U.S. Constitution authorizes Congress to do this? Does the 10th amendment mean anything anymore?

    • Did the same thing! Ack!

      Personally, I'm in favor of our Muicipal Overlords. I don't think they'll out-deliver the telcos but they'll provide reasonable, level baseline service. Right now, we live in an equivalent world of Coca Cola delivering water to our houses (at whatever prices containing whatever stimulants which make us thirsty) and the Munies trying to provide an alternative.

    • Re:Oh noes! (Score:4, Funny)

      by Adriax (746043) on Saturday August 04 2007, @04:12AM (#20111769)
      Price drops? Hell no, 10% across the board price jump to cover "losses due to unfair/unconstitutional competition" and add an extra year to contract lock-ins.

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