Bill Would Reverse Bans On Municipal Broadband

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."

preferential treatment

[timmarhy]

"'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.

what type of "regulatory preference"?

[PhrostyMcByte]

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?

Not just big telecoms

[Just Some Guy]

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?

Not really a problem

[drsquare]

As long as it's not paid for by the tax-payer I don't see the problem. Otherwise it's just a waste.

Re:preferential treatment

[Divebus]

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:Not just big telecoms

[gowen]

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.

Re:Not just big telecoms

[Daniel Dvorkin]

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.

Correct me if I'm wrong...

[Elyscape]

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.

Clean bill

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course the incumbent monopolies don't want competition from municipalities! They know their current services are miserable, that we don't have any other choice, and that there are a lot of well run, responsive, municipal utilities out there!

I live where I can choose between one of two local telco monopolies for bad Internet service: the phone company or the cable company. They don't really compete. Businesses have to go with DSL to get a static IP address and the privilege of running any servers. Home users go with the cable company because they already have cable television and the download speeds are marginally faster. Neither company has any connection whatsoever to the community, aside from extracting subscription fees and demanding cable right of ways. Both are widely despised.

In contrast, our local publicly owned water and electric utilities are responsive, provide excellent service, have a focus on low rates, and actively solicit community input, and (oddly enough) are widely respected.

If the water and electrical utility would provide the same sort of community oriented service for Internet that it now provides for water and electricity, I'd sign up in a heartbeat.

There is, in fact, nothing to stop them from doing so right now. I live where there are no laws banning municipally owned data networks. But that brings me to this bill: although it would explicitly allow such networks, when I read the Slashdot summary my first concern was about the kinds of requirements it places on the municipalities. For example, soliciting input from local businesses (which might be served by such a utility) would make good business sense, but requiring discussions with the ILEC and cable company would seem silly. Fortunately the bill looks very clean and merely appears to mandate community involvement -- which is appropriate for a community network.

I strongly recommend reading the bill. It easy to understand and only takes a minute.

By the way: I see little reason to regulate publicly owned utilities any differently than the existing monopolies.

Of course what I'd really like to see are the physical lines condemned and handed over to local government with the provision they allow any service provider who meets appropriate qualifications sell services over those lines. But since that won't happen, and would be a bit thorny in practice anyway, this bill seems like a reasonable step in the right direction.

In the long run, the only thing that's going to materially improve high speed Internet service for most of us is some interest by the Congress and President in improving the situation. As it is, without competition, without any prodding from the powers that be, and given the practicalities of constructing new networks, the monopolies see no reason to improve and it's too risky for anyone else. So here's hoping for more active government motivation against the problem come 2008.

postal roads?

[Joseph_Daniel_Zukige]

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

Re:Not just big telecoms

[Proofof. Chaos]

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, and the fees are usually pretty reasonable because they are determined by elected officials. On the other hand, they leave retail services up to the private sector, which also results in pretty reasonable costs because of competition. But when the government heavily regulates a privately owned industry, each side can blame the other as prices go up and service degrades. It's a perfect symbiotic relationship where the politicians stay in office and the tycoons keep making money.

The problem with socialism vs. capitalism is that compromise seldom works. You have to decide which things are best left to government to provide, and which things are best left to the private sector.

As far as internet goes, I think it's too early to decide. Let's let those cities that want to, provide it as a public service, and those cities that don't, leave it up to private industry. After a few years we should start to see which works better.

Re:Not really a problem

[argiedot]

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:Not just big telecoms

[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 last mile access (or two by companies which are not in the same primary market). Regulating equal access to the last mile has proved quite successful in the EU, which started out with government owned telcos.

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong...

[Winckle]

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".

Municipal broadband works well in Sweden

[SwedishPenguin]

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.

Re:Not really a problem

[TheRaven64]

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 this. The free service could be bandwidth-limited, and people who wanted more could pay for it (either with a subscription, or on a one-off basis). Alternatively, it could be free for non-commercial use, and companies could pay a fee to use it.

If the aim is widely deployed broadband, it seems that a better solution would be making it illegal to ban reselling of bandwidth bought from an ISP. That would allow anyone to run an access point for general use. Then all you need is a WAP that routes all traffic from unknown hosts directly to the Internet. A city could sell these cheaply (buy a load, sell them at close to wholesale) and have decent coverage up quickly.

Mixed breed

[keithjr]

I wager the future of public internet access will be a combined effort of private and public initiatives. Take for example the town of Brookline, MA [brookline.ma.us], which recently implemented the nations first border-to-border wireless internet access system. It was an initiative based in the town, organized by the local government, but implemented by a private firm (Strix Systems I believe) to get a professional infrastructure in place. Although it's a pay service for most homes, public hotspots exist in parks, recreational areas, and some public housing. In short, with this bill I think we can at least look forward to more systems like this cropping up, which blur the line between municipal implementation and private enterprise. In the end, it means more choice for the consumer and more pervasive internet access for the people themselves.

Screw this

[SpectreBlofeld]

Why don't we go ahead and put all goods and services in the hands of the government, because everything would be cheaper, right? Because they're not operating for a profit? I don't want to pay for your broadband, or anyone else's, with my tax dollars. Nor do I want my Internet regulated by those who brought us the PATRIOT act, the DMV, and the IRS. The government is terrible at managing cost-effective solutions to anything because they're spending other people's money. Take this million-dollar outhouse, for example: http://www.jldr.com/oh1mill.html [jldr.com] . "The whole project is loaded with Park Service overhead. The agency already has spent $860,000 for design and construction supervision teams. In all, the job could end up costing taxpayers more than $6 million." It's a four-holer outhouse with no running water. The worst argument for municipal broadband that I've heard is that it helps the poor who can't afford Internet access. I suppose we'll be buying them laptops with WiFi, too. The people that benefit most from municipal broadband are the people that can afford it but don't want to pay. If you want Internet access, pay for it. It's a luxury item that didn't exist in the public's perception fifteen short years ago. Don't levy taxes on the poor who can't afford or need a MySpace page so you can read Slashdot for free.

Re:Not just big telecoms

[Daniel Dvorkin]

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 garbage into paper, plastic and glass and metal, and "everything else"; the city takes care of the rest. Easy, smooth, and painless, unlike everywhere else I ever lived, where if you wanted to bother recycling, you had to drive stuff to the (private) recycling center yourself, no doubt doing more harm than good overall.

Even ATT is more customer oriented, and it's just about the worst the private sector has to offer.

In my experience, AT&T is actually better than the other Baby Bells, or Comcast or Time Warner for cable. OTOH, the last time I dealt with them, (a) it was actually AT&T, not the rebranded SBC, and (b) it was only for long distance, not local service. So I can't say what they're like now. My guess is, they suck just as much as Qwest, which is kind of my point: they all suck. They suck, in fact, just as much as any giant government agency you care to name. And they suck worse than city agencies, which at least can function on a human scale.

Big Anything sucks. Big Business, Big Government, Big Religion -- they all suck. They all have the same pathologies. What the "Anything" is usually matters less than the "Big" part.

I'm a big fan of local ISP's, as they were in the days of dial-up; generally I think they don't suck at all. But the fact of the matter is, with broadband, almost without exception, you have to pay a giant telecom for access. Given the choice between local ISP's competing freely, and municipal broadband, I'd choose the former. But that's not the choice most people get. It's not city vs. local business, it's city vs. big business. And again, in that case, the former makes more sense. If you can come up with an idea for a regulatory scheme that would make it possible for local ISP's to offer broadband access without dealing with the big telecoms, I'd be interested to hear it ... and then good luck getting it past AT&T's and Qwest's and Comcast's lobbyists.

Well, that's probably because you don't have a lot of experience dealing with underfunded, understaffed, municipal services.

I used to work for one: Denver Health Medical Center, nee Denver General Hospital, aka "The Knife and Gun Club." Were we perpetually underfunded and understaffed? Yes. Did we manage to be one of the top trauma and emergency medicine hospitals in the nation? Also yes. If you're shot, get in a car crash, or have a heart attack anywhere in the Denver metro area, you're better off at DHMC than any private hospital; and for less dramatic stuff, you're at least as well off. Same thing here in Minneapolis -- when the (city) paramedics and firefighters were pulling people off the I-35W bridge, they didn't take them to private hospitals, they took them to Hennepin County MC. There's a reason for that.

No, screw you.

[Anonymous Coward]

You can make the same argument about public schools ("I don't have kids," or "my kids go to private school,"), state universities (ibid), the FAA ("I don't fly."), public roads ("I don't drive."), the National Science Foundation ("I'm a religious loon who doesn't 'believe in' science."), public libraries ("Theft from the publishers! Er, I mean, Won't someone think about the poor starving authors?"), the EPA ("Toxic sludge is good for you!"), the NRC ("I trust private industry 100% where nuclear power plants are concerned, because private industry would never cut corners or skimp on safety to save a buck."), the DOL ("No employer would ever try to fuck me over or take advantage of me."), etc.

Shall I continue?

You may not use all of the services your tax dollars pay for, and neither do I, but when those tax dollars go to something that is actually useful and beneficial to the public (as opposed to pork projects, contractor "waste"/theft, etc.) what is your reason for objecting? Besides general short-sightedness, selfishness and/or greed? Especially when services are provided that private industry can't supply, won't supply for whatever reason, or might even attempt to block in order to maintain a monopolistic stranglehold?