Robert McChesney, president of “Free Press”:1, and John Podesta, president and CEO of the “Center for American Progress”:2, write about the need for Municipal Broadband and Community Wireless in “Let There Be Wi-Fi”:3 in the Washington Monthly.
The article covers a lot of ground, crafting a case for why municipal wireless initiatives have cropped up all across America, why telco incumbents are fighting them, and why they may be the only thing that will save this country from being an also-ran in the internet race.
bq. Those countries that achieve universal broadband are going to hold significant advantages over those who don’t. And so far, the United States is poised to be a follower — not a leader — in the broadband economy.
bq. …
bq. While about 60 percent of U.S. households do not subscribe to broadband because it is either unavailable where they live or they cannot afford it, most Japanese citizens can access a high-speed connection that’s more than 10 times faster than what’s available here for just $22 a month.
McChesney and Podesta discuss why other countries have more advanced internet access available. Often, its not that there has been government control of telecommunications. In Japan’s case, their progress was due specifically to the fact that their government gave each municipality the power to address deficiencies as necessary, including situations where local private telecommunications providers wouldn’t or couldn’t provide needed connectivity.
bq. The countries surpassing the United States in broadband deployment did so by using a combination of public entities and private firms. The Japanese built their world-class system by ensuring “open access” to residential telephone lines, meaning competitors paid the same wholesale price to use the wires. The country is also establishing a super-fast, nationwide fiber system via a combination of tax breaks, debt guarantees and subsidies. But of particular note, the Japanese government also encouraged municipalities to build their own networks, especially in rural areas. Towns and villages willing to set up their own ultra-high-speed fiber networks received government subsidies covering approximately one-third of their costs.
This is in marked contrast to the state of broadband in this country, where our President and our FCC have only paid lip service to solving the problem of universal internet access.
bq. Instead of encouraging competition, the FCC has allowed DSL providers and cable companies to shut out competitors by denying access to their lines. And whereas the Japanese government encourages individual towns to set up their own “Community Internet,” Washington has done nothing. Fourteen states in the United States now have laws on the books restricting cities and towns from building their own high-speed Internet networks. No wonder America is falling behind its Asian competitors.
Indeed, the early history of electrical service in America bears many similarities to the current state of broadband. Perhaps we can learn from the past, in this case.
bq. Borrowing from Richard Rudolph and Scott Ridley’s 1986 book, Power Struggle: The Hundred-Year War Over Electricity, Baller showed that when electricity first became available in the 1880s, privately owned utilities marketed “the new technology as synonymous with wealth, power and privilege,” lighting large cities, businesses, and the homes of the rich. Electricity also allowed factories to stay open 24 hours a day, and led to the institution of swing shifts. But communities that didn’t have electricity couldn’t produce as much, and couldn’t keep up with urban competitors. Rural communities were left with the choice of forming a government-owned utility or being left in the dark. Even big cities like Detroit built municipal power systems to cut prices and extend service. In response, private utility companies responded with a massive propaganda and misinformation campaign that attacked advocates of municipal power as “un-American,” “Bolshevik,” and “an unholy alliance of radicals.”
bq. But the expansion of electricity, Baller argued, showed that the presence — or even threat — of competition from the public sector is one of the surest ways to secure quality service and reasonable prices from private enterprises delivering critical public services. FDR, he notes, called municipal power systems “a birch rod in the cupboard, to be taken out and used only when the child gets beyond the point where more scolding does any good.”
bq. …Baller concluded: “The plain, hard truth is that universal electric service would never have developed on a timely basis in the absence of municipally owned electric utilities and rural electric cooperatives” — which still account for more than a quarter of the power in the country today.
Essentially, both telecom lobbyists and the state governments who are enacting their legislation are cutting municipalities off at the knees, removing the only solution many of them have left, and preventing these governments from spurring the competitive marketplaces for internet services that they desperately need.
Cable and telephone companies are playing dirty by launching misinformation campaigns.
bq. First, they contend that municipalities have no place in the “free market.” Of course, the cable and telephone giants don’t mention that their own monopolies — which control 98 percent of the broadband market — have been cemented with extensive public subsidies, tax breaks and incentives (as well as free rein to tear up city streets).
bq. Opponents also warn that municipalities will “crowd out” more efficient private players. In reality, most municipal networks are a last resort by desperate local governments. Often their choice isn’t between a municipal system and a private one, but between municipal and nothing.
bq. The same critics of Community Internet claim that cities are too “lazy” or inefficient to manage complex systems and will be unable to adapt to changing technologies. But municipalities have a long track record of successfully and efficiently operating power plants, sewage systems and subways. It’s hard to imagine that the broadband networks—most of which will actually be operated by private contractors—are any more complex. Perhaps the more obvious question is: If these systems are destined to fail, why are the telephone and cable companies expending so much energy trying to stop them?
In the end, the solution requires members from all levels of government to both recognize that there is a problem, and be strong enough to enact smart policy that will address that problem.
bq. Most importantly, the federal government must ensure that the cable and telephone monopolies can’t crush innovative projects like Wireless Philadelphia and the emerging national movement for Community Internet. Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) have introduced a bill that would free municipalities to decide for themselves which technologies best serve their citizens. U.S. policy should create incentives for communities to build advanced telecommunications networks in hundreds of cities and towns across the country, creating robust competition for communications services, assisting small entrepreneurs through public-private partnerships, and bringing opportunity to low-income urban neighborhoods and rural communities too often neglected by large entrenched monopolies.
[1]http://www.freepress.net
[2]http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=8473
[3]http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0601.podesta.html
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Filed under: Community Wireless, Muniwireless, Policy, Urban Wireless
