Municipal Broadband Not Only Choice for City Role in Deployment, Advocates Say
Citywide government-owned broadband networks aren’t the only option for municipal participation in broadband deployment, broadband advocates said Monday during an Ars Technica online event. Municipal broadband networks have gotten national attention in recent months because of petitions filed by the Electric Power Board of Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Wilson, North Carolina, seeking FCC pre-emption of state laws restricting their ability to expand their municipal broadband networks.
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A municipality “should have the right to pursue whatever model is in its own best interest,” said Gig.U Executive Director Blair Levin, a former FCC chief of staff and now Brookings Institution nonresident senior fellow at the Metropolitan Infrastructure Initiative. “If I were on a city council, I would tend to favor changes in policies that improve the economics of private deployment over municipal ownership and operation, but I would not take any options off the table as a starting position.”
Most municipalities that have gone the muni broadband route “have also tried to encourage private ISPs to improve service or to encourage new ISPs to enter the market,” said Next Century Cities (NCC) Policy Director Christopher Mitchell. NCC is a pro-municipal broadband coalition of 32 cities that includes Chattanooga and Wilson. Municipalities should examine at least their ability to “build and potentially operate fiber networks serving key anchor institutions” like schools and public safety agencies, said Mitchell, who is also director of the Telecommunications as Commons Initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. “These networks should be built with plenty of excess capacity that could be used to connect businesses or even serve as a backbone for a citywide network.”
Recent announcements about planned gigabit fiber deployments from Google and other ISPs are a reason for optimism, “but no one should uncork the champagne,” Levin said. “If Google changes its mind, if cities don't focus on the long term … or if the fundamental economics shift” due to corporate takeovers or other market forces, “the competitive picture could change and the announcements could end up never becoming real," said Levin. "But we are in a much better position than we were a year ago.”
If municipalities choose to deploy government-owned networks, collaboration between communities “is absolutely preferable to going it alone,” said Will Aycock, operations manager for Wilson’s Greenlight Community Broadband. “The exact nature of multicommunity approaches will be varied, as there are no one-size-fits-all solutions to” deploying broadband, he said. Wilson has received at least six requests from communities beyond its existing broadband footprint in recent months, Aycock said.