Anti-Muni Broadband Bills Country Wide

Ant writes "Broadband Reports says that 14 and possibly more states that have or will pass(ed) bills banning community-run broadband. Free Pass shows a map breakdown of the states while Tallahassee.com takes a look at a newly proposed bill in Florida, backed by Sprint, BellSouth, Verizon, and Comcast, designed to bog down the muni-development process."

That's funny

Here in the Land of The Free (i.e. Western Europe), we allow our local/community governments to do what the electorate want them to do.

Aren't we naive....

Re:That's funny

Yes, well here in the Home of the Brave (i.e. USA), we allow our local/state/federal government to do whatever the large corporations want.

Re:That's funny

you'd be surprised at how easy it is to get the ear of your county commissioner, district attorney, or city councilman.

Which is why the corporations are trying, in this case, to circumvent the local governments by using the state legislature to overrule them. The state level is where the interface between people and politicians start to break down. It's still possible to get elected by going door to door shaking hands and explaining how you plan to do your job. I personally know a state rep who does this and his party hates him for this. But the easier and these days more travelled route is to spend a lot of money on advertising.

Re:That's funny

It'd work that way, really, if the corporations didn't play both sides of the game. You're never gonna get elected without a large, large sum of money. Namely because if you don't have it, your opposition does. And unfortunately, money DOES buy political races. Nobody knows who most people running for office even are, so whoevers commercials do a better job getting their name out there (most people vote on name recognition alone) will usually win.

Don't think local politics is exempt from this; most local politicians aspire to higher offices. Local governments are often corrupt and short sighted, at least in large cities, and will put a few quick bucks ahead of any sort of long term progress, as they'll have a higher statewide office by the time anything bad comes of it. If they can show the corporations how much they care (as they did in Houston, by making it policy to ignore any and all environmental violations by the oil refineries; now Houston has the most polluted air in the country) then they can get some help when they want that next level of political power.

It may be just my experiences with it, but government basically is run by corporations. IMO corporate donations to political parties should be banned outright. Politics should be the domain of the people, personal contributions to campaigns ONLY. Of course, this will never happen, and I'll let you figure out why.

Anti-americanism

I posit that current anti-americanism is not a "hate America" or "hate Americans" posture, but "hate the imperialist behaviour of the current American government" in the name of the American people. I think Blair is being a dickhead too, but I don't translate that into a blanket anti-British feeling.

Re:That's funny

Yeah, let's discuss Airbus funding, because Boeing receives no government funds. Yeah, right.

Re:That's funny

For now, few may use it, but as time goes on more and more people are using it. This is basically the same argument as public roads vs private roads with toll booths. I can understand the argument for allowing private roads to be built on private land, even the argument to shutting out government competition. But in areas of high traffic like downtown, where most traffic is government anyways, its absolutly essential that government be allowed to build roads that everyone can freely use.

What you say? Almost most roads nowadays are government controlled. What else you say, most broadband carriers are using lines that government granted money for in the first place?

Re:That's funny

Here in the land of the free, we apparently DON'T like competition. We don't like choice. Its too confusing. If we liked competition, we wouldn't have just 1 cable company in an area.

Re:That's funny

I understand your point. But the current telcoms haven't done such a could job of providing internet access.

Most of them are content to keep voice and internet seperate so the can bill us twice. There's little incentive to give consumers more bandwidth because then the internet may compete with cable television, a service that many ISPs provide for a seperate charge, read conflict-of-interest.

Many of us still pay $30/mo for DSL over 50+ year old copper wires that have been paid for thousands of times over.

The telcos have also been using consumer profits to run investment scams with airline and credit card companies that have nothing to do with telecommunications.

Remeber, one telco tried to buy Disney for $60 billion. Yeah, that's $60,000,000,000. So instead of investing money to give consumers more bandwidth the MBAs, who run the company are more interesting in investing on behalf of shareholders than customers.

So, though you make a good point about government involvement in internet access I think we need to see a lot of reforms before we entrust this to the current telcos.

Business kills

If there was as much money in building and running "Community Clubs" I'd wager the big corps would try taking over the basketball courts and hockey rinks. All so the locals have more choice, you know.

Re:Business kills

They do try. The Saginaw Spirit hocky team tried to buy exclusive use of our public ice rink a while back (not the rink itself, just wanted it closed to the public for the three months of the year that people occasionally go there so they can practice). Thankfully, they're even more broke than the city and couldn't afford it, since the city council just loves to sell public facilities. Dr. Shaheen (rich retired doctor who's into real estate in the area) has bought most of them. It's not always a bad thing when a businessman buys a public facility, though. All the ones Shaheen bought are still public facilities, it's just that they're clean now. That's more than can be said for the Court Theatre.

Community Standards.

When I first heard of these 'full profit for telecomm companies' acts, I thought, WOW, how completely self serving of those corporations. While I still think that the legislation is too giving to those companies, I decided to think of what could happen if government controlled Internet access. The community clubs which you speak of carry many restrictions about use, would you like your Internet to work the same way?

I can imagine that in smaller communities and perhaps larger ones, that 'local decency groups' would force local elected officials to censor objectionable content. Since they would be you ISP it would be easy to administer community standards. I can imagine that political hacks in charge of the network creating 'routing problems' which block opposition candidates, or the local rumor mill. Heck the local police could check on your email, or see which sites you visit. While larger communities might have good separation, smaller ones might even have the police dispatcher as the overnight server support!

I think that these laws should be written to include 'fair access' in the same way that local telephone companies are starting to open their own access, sort of a carrot and stick approach.

this is nothing new

Cable companies fought for and won laws that banned community run Cable TV type systems back in the early days of cable.

there used to be "community tv" or basically a neighborhood TV antenna setup. the would all get together and buy one large tower and good antennas as well as equipment to send the signal to the homes. these were made illegal in most places by cable tv companies in the area or coming into that area.

I know, my father used to set these up for smaller communities.

Re:this is nothing new

What really gets me is how they think they can really stop us.

Yes, they can. Why does the state think they can stop you from shooting up some heroin (or stop you from looking at kiddie porn (or stop you from copying music)), in the privacy of your own home?

What are they going to do?

Detect wireless networks and prosecute. They can simply issue fines on the basis of a triangulated detection on your residence. They can then advance this concept by issuing blanket search warrants, which leads to police knocking on your door and confiscating equipment.

Bust down my door and take my WIFI router away?

That's unlikely to occur. It's overall better to simply fine you. They may also knock, and demonstrate that their detection equipment shows that your home is the problem, hence they have probable cause, so please open the door, Sir, or we'll have to force entry. Chances are, the scared little White boy (the probable target population for wireless crime) is going to open the door, and he's going to get fined, lose his equipment, and maybe be arrested.

Throw me in prison for building a network?

Yes. It's more likely, however, that they'll fine you. Fines are nonviolent, bring in revenue, and avoid all that nasty uncertainty of actual court action (in which a jury might actually decide you are not morally guilty of committing a crime).

The government just loves to illegalize the things that people tend to do for themselves to bring pleasure and capability. In America, this is trending sharply upward, so we must now as a class consider our positions as constant criminals. I look forward to the magic day when cops will just say "ah, screw it" and routinely ignore things ... making it completely obvious that certain laws are illegitimate if they constantly make most of us criminals.

Re:this is nothing new

'S truth. CATV stood not for CAble TV, but for Community Antenna TV.

Re:this is nothing new

I'm actually a little surpised to see Slashdotters so eager for the goverment to jump into this. Do we REALLY think the Government can do this better/more efficiently than private business? Forever? 'Cause that's what it will be.

I think what's going on is that we're fed up with the DSL/Cable duopoly, which is entirely understandable because they're doing a bad job with bad customer service at high prices. There are few companies I hate more passionately than Time Warner Cable. And, yes, I'm including Microsoft. But to then go running off to mommy and da....oops, I mean government officials...crying "Fix it! Fix it!" is a little short sighted.

Isn't what we really want just more competition? I guess I'd rather see government, whether local, state, or federal, offering various non-permanent subsidies to businesses that wanted to offer competing broadband capabilities. Perhaps only making those subsidies available in communities where current providers failed to meet certain service/price targets.

Re:this is nothing new

I'm actually a little surpised to see Slashdotters so eager for the goverment to jump into this. Do we REALLY think the Government can do this better/more efficiently than private business? Forever? 'Cause that's what it will be.

I don't think the differences are so significant as to be noteworthy, and the benefits for the community are great. I know it's trendy to believe "government is always bad", but it's not always true. I've worked in enough corporate environments to know how screwed up and inefficient they can be.

Isn't what we really want just more competition?

Sometimes. But competition isn't the end-all be-all. Sure, it works great. Most of the time. But not all of the time.

Re:this is nothing new

I said thsi last time, but I'll say it again:

I trust my local government that I can talk to anytime I feel like it more than I trust a company that most likely doesn't even have a local office let alone someone I can talk to at a whim.

& except for the case of Philly most community broadband is setup by small area not getting serviced by the big companies. Which is exactly where I am. I live in a town of 5000, 6000 if you include the farmers til halfway to the next group of towns. I can see my mayor at my local grocery store or bar... Or even a step further I can visit him at his home. Same with any of the city council members.

Want to talk to Verizon (who 'owns' the local phoen lines and 'sometimes' offers DSL)? Well that's gonna be a 30 mile drive to the biggest city in the region. Then you can talk to a peon behind the billing desk, because no one else will talk to you...

So uh yeah when I can personally smack the mayor upside the head for being a dumbass or a company where I can't even talk to anyone above a receptionist... Well I'll take the local government thanks.

Re:this is nothing new

Uh what other network? Maybe you don't live where I do, but I have exactly one choice for phone service (Verizon), one choice for cbale TV (Time Warner), heck I have one choice for grocery store! You damned Moron! For gods sake if it wasn't mandated by law I doubt anyone would bother to offer us phone service. Not even Verizon bothers to offer us cellphone service (neither do the two other local cell providers from that big town I mention) for all that we are 30 miles away!

You want to know why? Well tough no ones bothering to answer you as to why, it just is. Has been, maybe always will be.

In place were their are no choices your statement makes not one bit of sense. Who am I going to go to?!? Their is no one else normally. Moving isn't the option either.

I'm tired of people who don't understand the point that bussiness doesn't allways (or even some of the time) do what is best for the people and so when that happens it might (just might now) make sense to let the local government provide a solution! Instead you'd rather I not have any options aparently, by blocking my (& my neighbors) ability to leverage our local tax dollars and government to help ourselves! What gives you the right to do that exactly?

I know this will go over your head (it has any other time I've ever tried to point this out on slashdot), but government isn't allways bad, heck companies aren't allways bad... What matters is what works for the people in the end. And if nothign else having a municipal run broadband that was successful would spur companies otherwise uninsterested in an area that maybe (just maybe!) their is a market and therefore money to be made giving me chocies in the end.

Re:I'm not sure if I'll ever understand this

Try to name three things the Government does good

1. Water
2. Power (electric)
3. Sewer

There's a long history of goverment doing each of these cheaper and more reliable than the for-profit companies that take over when these utilities are privatized.

Re:I'm not sure if I'll ever understand this

Can you actually drink your tap water?

Yep. There's nothing unhealthy in it. It sometimes has a metallic taste, so I'll run it through a filter on my end, since _ANYONE_ sending water through miles of metal pipes will result in water with a metallic taste.

Please actually do some long term research rather than just pointing at messed up transitions pains.

I have. Have you? Muncipial power companies in CA were forced to privatize their serves. They're still paying tons more per KWh. So how many years will this 'transition period' last? Oh, btw, in other countries were the power grid was privatized as much as 20 years ago, they still pay a ton more per KWh (even taking inflation in to account).

Just because you don't see the $100 a month to pay for something doesn't mean it isn't there.

Well, as a municipal utility you get to see the books. If you want to know how much of your taxes are going to subsidize it, you can simply read their annual reports.

Every municipal utility I'm aware of cover their day-to-day expenses from their service fees. Some do get government funding to help for captial improvements, but many private utilties also get government funding for captial improvements.

Re:this is nothing new

I'm actually a little surpised to see Slashdotters so eager for the goverment to jump into this. Do we REALLY think the Government can do this better/more efficiently than private business? Forever?
Yes.

This recorrent myth that "private business" is always more efficient and beneficial for the user doesn't even stand a chance under a closer look. I find it hilarious that these great saviours, the "private businesses", need good old government interference to forbid any effort of providing a community and/or municipal WiFi network access. I private business is oh so much more efficient, why do they need these? Their obvious higher quality and pricing should be enough right? Except that they are there to maximize their profits, not primarily to provide a service. If they can (and they always can, with the power that big business has over the corrupt politicians) keep prices high and provide shitty service, they will. Only if the bottom line is affected is the behaviour changed, and even then, trough price fixing and other cartle like tactics, nothing substantial changes.

Internet access is becoming important enough to constitute a basic necessity (education wise, for example). As such the State should provide it. If private business can top the State offer, that's great! But, as the British pension fiasco showed, they seldom can.

I'm not from the USA though, so I lack that "Sheriff and a saloon and many guns!" kind of view on individual liberty as opposed to colective beneficts dispensed by the Government.

Re:this is nothing new

Right... And our corporate masters are looking out for our best interests... sure. I always just thought that they were looking for the best ways to sodomize us without us leaving? All you free market people rant about choice, and that is exactly the whole point behind DEMOCRACY, these are our elected officials. The government is evil because you voted them in. Rhetorical you, mind.

And the whole jist of this, is COMMUNITY, not government. Yes, I like my community. I'd pick it over free market, or a 5% price difference. Wanna know why? Because the money goes to community, and hence enriches MY enviroment, and my neighborhood. Seems like a better thing than making Ayn Rand or Adam Smith happy.

Remember, it is YOUR government if you voted. And if you didn't you have no right to open your mouth.

Re:this is nothing new

I find it hilarious that these great saviours, the "private businesses", need good old government interference to forbid any effort of providing a community and/or municipal WiFi network access.

Good point. And one that I would like the average Randian Libertarian /.er to explain. If they are so against the government regulating industry, why would they be for industry regulating government? And if corporations could do it cheaper, what is wrong with letting government do it, and then if they are correct the gov't won't be able to compete?

Though if we had community cable/broadband, and it cost a couple bucks more, I'd choose it over the telco or cable company, just to support my community. I doubt that most people would do this, though, caring more about their pocket books than the state of where they live. If my neighbor takes my money for service, I view that as a better situation than some rich ass living in New York or California taking it.

But then again I live is a rather small violently liberal community, one that passed a law to keep superwallmart out, and from undercutting the locally owned buisness.

Re:this is nothing new

Government frequently does the job better than private business.

A recent study (I heard it on NPR) showed that the government-run VA provided better health care than the private competition. Something about knowing the patients would come back, enabling them to focus more on long-term and preventitive care.

Social Security spends less on administration than most private retirement plans. And they provide expensive-to-manage disability insurance as well.

Medicare and Medicaid provide health services with far lower overhead than private insurance companies; IIRC, spending 3% of revenues on administrative expenses vs. 30%. And that's with "free market competition".

When the private supplier has a monopoly position, watch out. The suppliers are maximizing their profit, which means high prices and expensive service has to be justified by the revenue that it brings in (or the revenue that would be lost if they didn't).

"Government subsidies" are another name for corporate welfare. And you can claim they won't be permanent, but they will end up like copyright, renewed and extended every time they're about to expire.

Best of both worlds

A good compromise would be to ban municipal wireless internet access unless no provider has established a commercial wireless internet access within 2 years.

I don't understand

Why can't the communities register broadband companies and run them in a style similar to mutual societies or worker's co-operatives?

They could ...

but then they couldn't fund it using tax-payer dollars. That is half of the appeal of municipal internet access - it is "cheap" or "free" because it is being subsidized by people who don't use it (those without computers), or who use it and are paying a disproportionate amount of the costs (the wealthy). The local telcos and cable companies are definately not providing the best bang-per-buck possible, mostly because there is not enough competition. But a small coop has it's own inefficiencies, and I would not expect them to be able to do much better than the existing broadband services on price - without sweetheart price-setting legislation forcing the hardline owners to offer their lines to the coop at whatever the politicians think is a "fair" price.

That said, even though I would not support government broadband in my community, I do not like these laws. I am a pragmatic liberterian but I also believe in democracy formost. If these comunities want thier towns to provide broadband, that is their decision to make. The federal government has no place telling the states what services they can and can't offer, and the states have no place telling the counties/towns what services they can and can't offer. Besides, the fact that there is such demand from the comunity for these services shows that the existing monopolies are not serving the people well, and creating legisation to enshrine them further is not the answer.

Re:They could ...

I agree with you, but I think there's something you aren't considering:

With public wifi, the costs are an internet connection, and various adapters. (Don't have to pay for locations, businesses love having a free wifi connection in their business.)

With for pay, you added 'billing', and 'keeping track of who paid their bill', and all sorts of crap.

Sticking up a public network might cost, oh, 300 dollars a month, with a startup cost of 5000 dollars. (Probably need a system admin, but, then again, they probably already have an IT guy for the government. Or just have the local high school students volunter to run it.) This is trivially within reach of any town over 200 people.

Now add billing, and someone to keep track of it. Well, you could do that with income tax, except people don't pay local income tax. There are going to have to be bills sent.

Now add the fact that keeping track of the people on the network is now a full time job...you need to keep track of MAC addresses or logins or something, and match those up with the billing.

I mean, you've at least tripled the cost. You've probably added another full-time staff, and you've turned it into a business.

I mean, imagine the street in front of your house, and all those people who don't use it. Imagine all the streets that you don't use, and how you pay for them. Now imagine that the government could keep track of who used what streets, at least statistically, and just billed everyone for their existimated useage...that would cost a lot more than just having the streets.

Sometimes, just doing things for everyone is a hell of a lot cheaper than billing people for them. Yes, people without computers will pay for people who have them, but people in cities paied for phone lines in the country, and people without cars pay for roads, people without children pay for schools, etc, etc. A wifi broadband connection is peanuts compared to one road being built on the other side of the state, which you pay for all the time.

OTOH, my local touristy city has an open wifi network on the square that I think was setup by the Chamber of Commerce. Or just three or four businesses on the square working together. (Of course, I'm talking about a football field worth of coverage here, not a city.)

Community or government?

From TFA: "A bill limiting Internet offerings by government entities is back for legislative consideration..."

Re:Community or government?

Communities form local governments to collect taxes and perform various and sundry duties for the community. If the community can run a fscking library, school, water works, police department, or any other services, why the hell shouldn't they provide a telcom service?

This only seems non-obvious looking at cities like Los Angeles or New York. Go out to Tumbleweed, Idaho and suddenly the relationship to local government is pretty friggen obvious when your cousin is the judge, your neighbor is the mayor and aslo the gas station attendent. In that sense, community and government are utterly synonymous.

And it don't stop, and it won't stop,...

No rest for the weary. Even if its voted down, it will just come back at the next opportunity. That is why we don't get tired or frustrated, we stand strong and casually vote this crap down as many times as we have to.

Obviously community internet will lead to community controlled media eventually squeezeing out cable/phone and every other communication medium. I don't blame the companies one bit. But I will blame the government if they let this happen.

Don't worry, America...

Community-backed broadband isn't the way we want to go. That sort of stuff is basically anti-capitalist at heart. Really. These companies might look like they're in it for the money, but really, they have our best interests at heart. Seriously. I promise.

Oh, and Saddam really did have all those weapons. Honest. I swear.

I don't think governments should be competing...

but on the other hand, I don't like rules that forbid a municipality from doing something which could benefit its citizens.

While in the vast majority of instances, it might be appropriate to ban a city from setting up its own ISP, there might be a few towns which are being ignored.

We have towns like that in my northern state. My father lives in a town with no broadband, heck, with NO local dial-up! To say that city can't set up its own ISP is ludicrous. The private sector has had decades to set up something but they've failed to even take notice. The city should be able to take action "for the common good" to set up its own.

This must be what they mean by "free market"

Ah, yes. The free-market system, unfettered from legislative "regulations". Behold its efficiency! Marvel at its ability to out-compete any misguided "Big government" attempts to duplicate that which the market can provide!

And they say profit motive is a good thing...

Do you call this good? While I'm not 100% in support of community run networks (mostly due to the fact that there aren't enough smart people to run them securely in most communities), I think this illustrate the point quite well that governements no longer have power, the businesses do. After all, who has the most money? Your governments (state local and federal) or businesses? Considering the huge debt at the federal level and the deficits at state and local levels, my money (hehehe) is on the businesses controlling the most funds. And they say we have "big government", hah! It seems that during the past decade, as the tech sector has grown tremendously and gained the most wealth in a short time, more and more "laws and legal decisions" have been bought by them. We are headed rapidly for the corporate feudal system with our governments being democracies only in name. Wake up... we're only a few steps from complete fascism.

Anti competitive

.. correct me if im wrong , but isnt bringing anti competitive legislation to stop competition (even if it is run by local gouverments) anti competitive in of itself. Yes reading that makes my head sping too. If the city wants to provide free or cheap broadband to its citizens then what is wrong with that , if the companys wish to compete they should have to offer something which the competition doth not. I would far rather have a state run monopoly on services , as atleast then i do have some say over the board of directors via a vote. Aslong as the gouvernment plays fair there is no reason why they should be disalowed to compete

rather strong legislation for Texas

The bill in the works for Texas would kill not only municipal internet service but could be used to shut down municipal web sites, information channels, etc. "Information" services is a large amount of stuff to block with a single piece of legislation.
http://www.freepress.net/communityinternet/=TXbill [freepress.net]
Under the bill, municipalities and municipal electric utilities would be prohibited from providing, directly or indirectly, alone or in partnership with other service providers, either "telecommunications" or "information" services as those terms are defined under federal law.

libertarian arguments against government works

These laws make about as much sense as a law that prohibits a government from maintaining a highway system. A government, with its existing rights of way and networks, is in a prime position to build out computer networks, particulary in places where corporations don't feel they can make a profit. I'm really really tired of libertarian arguments that don't take into account all the hidden and structural subsidies that alter the landscape of the supposedly Utopian Adam Smithian Capitalist Marketplace that they claim to want to protect. True capitalism of this sort means that only the strong survive - your next door neighbor with a gun. So it's not communism when a government decides to do something - we're a community, we live together, and if our governments want to build infrastructure that benefits everyone, let them!

Greed

It's sad that basically these companies are trying to preserve their virtual monopolies on broadband service instead of attempting to work with communities to develop large scale community wide broad band solutions.

A company such as SBC should really be playing both sides here as they could still charge for a fat pipe to be run a town. The difference being that a municipality has the money to subsidize the pipe and basically sell the bandwith to residents at a loss. SBC makes it's money albeit slightly less than if they were to provide service to each household but money none the less.

We'll see what happens, but I'm seriously considering asking some of my neighbors to get together to lease a line from SBC and then set up a community router. It will save all of us money and I'll finally be able to get a decent connection without interference from the 8 other routers my laptop can connect to.

This isn't stopping Communities!!!

GOD.. R... T... F... A...!!!

It's stopping local governments from doing it!

Re:This isn't stopping Communities!!!

Learn politics. The local government is the orginised expression of the community. The whole purpose of the local government is to reprisent the comunity and take care of issues related to the community. If the local governement can do it cheaper than business, then so be it. Business better learn to compete.

By the way, the lack of cheap Internet access stalls the local economy. So it's in the best interest of community businesses to support community networks

My experience with municipal broadband

In my small town of Spencer, IA we have a municipal provider of electricity, cable TV, phone, and broadband.

Phone costs $10.50/mo per line.
Basic Cable costs $5.00/mo
3Mbit/sec broadband costs $27.50/mo.

Not to mention some of the lowest electric rates in the state.

The reason we did this was because the local cable company had spent decades gouging on the prices on cable and having crappy service and we finally had enough of it and built our own system.

Mediacom still is around, but now charging fair prices. This municipal effort INCREASED COMPETITION, breaking the monopoly the phone and cable companies enjoyed for so many years.

I'm a firm believer in Municipal Utilities, if you have the chance to write a letter to your congresspeople by all means do it now.

Re:My experience with municipal broadband

Mediacom still is around, but now charging fair prices. This municipal effort INCREASED COMPETITION, breaking the monopoly the phone and cable companies enjoyed for so many years.

This is a big problem with how capitalism has been going. When there is competition it's a win, but when there is little competition we end up with oliopolies and monopolies, and they will charge as much as they can get away with to maximize their profit. I'd argue that having a single company control a business is much worse than having the government control it, as at least theoritically the government can provide the service at a fair price, whereas without competition the business will not.

I do have some qualms about government going into business's that are handled by the private sector, besides the big brother issue. The main issue is that the if the government wants to allow there to continue to be a private market, they have to ensure they don't charge less than what it costs to provide the service. In the case the parent post provides, it appears they have not run out the competition, which is a good thing. What I'd like to see is for industries such as this where the government wants to do something about unfair prices, the government help setup co-ops that would be self-sufficient after x number of years. As long as there is a rule of (at minimum) self-sufficiency, private enterprise should still be able to thrive.

Does anyone else out there

...have a problem with government controlling access to the Internet? Anyone at all?

I know this is Slashdot and we're supposed to hate big buisiness and everything, but isn't government-provided Internet access just a bad idea? First off we have the fact that government can always undercut the opponent and hide the costs in taxes; few will ever complain. So clearly there's the risk that in the end we'll end up paying even more for broadband than we used to. Second, once government is involved, this throws the door wide open for "concerned mothers" to start lobbying for state-, county-, or city-wide controls on the content. You know how draconian those content filters are at government-run schools? In all likelihood these will go on municipal broadband offerings, too.

If it's like any other government service, it will be poorly and insecurely run, slow to respond (for instance, blocking ports to stem the spread of viruses), and twice as expensive as anything else. And by the time it's in, we'll be stuck with it for the rest of eternity (Amtrak, anyone?).

Re:Does anyone else out there

Does anyone else out there have a problem with government controlling access to the Internet? Anyone at all?

Not at all.

Government is bound by the constitution, and the first and fourth amendments should be easy to leverage into stopping those 'concerned mothers'. (Filters are legal in schools and libraries, because minors have very limited constitutional rights. Adults can ask the librarian/teacher to disable the filtering while they use the computer.)

Private companies, OTOH, have no such restrictions. Your local cable monopoly could decide to respond to those 'concerned mothers' and slap on a filter, and there would be nothing you could do about it. In theory you could switch to another provider, but in most places there's a monopoly on broadband.

If it's like any other government service, it will be poorly and insecurely run, slow to respond, and twice as expensive as anything else

Take a look at the history of municipal utilites that were privatized. The municipal service offered water, sewer and electric power for less than for-profit companies that replaced them. And they did operate in the black while doing it, and service was as reliable as private companies.

In a completely free market, I'd agree that government is bad, but in the case of utilites there is no free market.

Trading one monopoly for another?

I don't really understand the hue and cry from folks on this forum to have their broadband run by the a local government. Aren't you just trading one monopoly (the telco's and cable company) for another (the municipality)? In the latter case, it strikes me that you don't have the choice not to pay the government, where as if the telco and/or cable company sucks, you can decide not to pay them, which gives them an incentive to at least make sure that there service doesn't suck too bad. But with the gov't I don't see what incentive they'll have to provide good services. You're legally required to pay your taxes whether the service is good or bad.

Personally, where I live, I wouldn't mind seeing the gov't reeled in a bit. That way that can't force my neighbor (who is happy as a clam w/out broadband) to subsidize my broadband. If my broadband provider starts to suck, I'd like the option of not subsidizing someone else's broadband. I don't see any way to do this latter part if it's run by a gov't.

For a group of people strongly opposed to monopolies (e.g. micorosft), I don't really understand why you'd prefer to have some other monopoly (e.g. the local gov't) running your lives.

Is there something obvious that I'm missing?

Had this been applied to electricity...

What if back in the 1920's laws were passed to ensure that public electrical projects couldn't be setup to compete with private industry?

We wouldn't have had the TVA, BPA and Rural electrification. Many rural areas would probably still be without electricity.

Interestingly enough, the Bush admin wants to get rid of the BPA (Bonneville Power Admin) that runs the dams in the Northwest. Doing so will amount to a 30% rate increase for electric customers in the Northwest. So much for the free market...

Larry says...

1.) This legislation is despicable.

2.) Don't take my word for it. Listen to Prof. Lessig's first podcast [lessig.org] for a thoroughly considered explanation of why this is not in our best interest.

Municipal Cable and Internet Parallels

Current initiatives for municipal broadband have a lot in common with previous attempts to set up municipal cable systems, not the least of which is that the same companies (Cox, Viacom, Adelphia, etc.) are involved.

Municipal cable TV proposals aren't completely dead, they've just gone out of style. However, The city of Burlington, Vermont, is petitioning the state public service board (http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?A ID=/20050214/NEWS/502140334/1003/NEWS02) for permission to set up its own cable television service. The difference between this and the broadband proposals is that Adelphia is claiming that establishing a municipal cable network would be "overbuild," while with the broadband they're claiming that allowing a municipality to set up a broadband network would then prevent commercial companies from entering the market.

What do they want? If it's open markets, they should be willing to compete with municipal projects on a level playing field (i.e. one where the city can't subsidise their system through tax revenues).

If they champion "first-to-post" efficiency, then whoever builds the network first should be able to reap the benefits. Given government's alleged inefficiencies, that may mean that even if a city builds a cable or wireless network, they'd eventually have to sell it to a commercial provider if it becomes a liability to the city.

All it will take is one state allowing this before it becomes a national issue with a fight in Congress. The big cable companies are fighting this state to state at the moment, but Vermont is a very independent-minded state. IF they let Burlington proceed it wouldn't be the first time they've told an industry co-op to buzz off and set a precedent for any city that wants to do something similar either with cable or IP. I expect Adelphia to pull out every weapon they can find to stop them, but I'm hoping, as with the sign restriction laws, land development rules, and the non-returnable bottle ban, that Vermont holds its ground and lets Burlington take Adelphia on head to head.

They may ultimately fail, but I'd rather see them go down in a fair fight than see the project get bound, gagged, and tossed in Lake Champlain before it can get to the arena.

I live in Tallahassee, we already have Canopy.

Currently in Tallahassee you can get free wireless internet both downtown and at the airport. It's called Canopy, and it basically requires you to access a website first and then it connects you. It's quite convienent in the airport while you're waiting for a plane, I haven't had a chance to use it much downtown yet.

Also, just for reference: Comcast highspeed internet without cable, $55/month. Gotta love monopolies fighting tooth and nail to hang on to their huge profits.

Since Adam Smith, the balance has changed

We are still working on the outdated idea that government is big and we need to be protected from it, while business is small and needs free access to markets to flourish. This may be true still in a few places in the world, but increasingly the big government we need to be protected from is large companies.

Case in point: in our town, Walmart wanted to build on a green field site. By the time they got around to it zoning rules had changed, but guess what? Our small municipality could not afford the legal fees to take on Walmart. Big corporate crushing small government.

And this is the same thing again. The fact is, if small municipalities can afford to provide broadband at reasonable rates, the private suppliers should easily be able to match them. Because private enterprise is so much more efficient than public enterprise, isn't it?

Well, pardon me while I beg to differ. Why should private enterprise, with its private airplanes, hugely overpaid execs, vast corporate dick-swinging-contest headquarters, and layers of management, be so much more efficient than small community efforts where the management overhead is minimal and the project manager isn't spending most of his or her time trying to do down the internal competition for the coveted corner office job?

Private enterprise is very good at delivering capital goods cheaply, but actually not always terribly good at delivering services cheaply.

It is hard to understand on what basis private companies have the right to prevent citizens banding together to co-operate on projects, whether it be putting up a community hall or a local broadband service. Perhaps a constitutional lawyer could explain it, but an expert on the cash flow of lobby companies might do better.

Freedom

Individuals have all the same rights. But companies have more rights then individuals.

That's the so called democracy in the United States.

If the big boys aren't interested...

I'm in Jacksonville FL; the city gov't has set up a large neighborhood hotspot for one of the 'developing' neighborhoods. The article says this sort of thing would be exempted, but the phrase you HAVE to add to something like this is "for how long?"

If the cable/DSL duopoly isn't interested in serving an area, why should they get to whine when the local government steps in to fill the need? The demand is clearly present, or the city fathers wouldn't bother either.

Then add the provisions that apparently hinder public websites for city/county/state government, and you REALLY have to start wondering.

The problem here is two-fold

The local governments are wanting to provide Wi-Fi because the telecom monopolies are sitting on their asses and not providing it because of various reasons.

The second issue is in the areas where the telecom monopolies are providing it, they are the only choice and are charging too much. If the government wants to get involved, contract out the data infrastructure. Don't leave it in the hands of a Verizon to control everything.

Which scenario is better?
Scenario A: Verizon runs fiber to my house. Verizon is my only choice of ISP. If I want another ISP, they have to run a separate fiber line to my house. Nuts!

Scenario B: Gov't awards job to contractor to run fiber to my house. I can choose from multiple ISP's for my service over this fiber.

Re:Like I have always known...

Yeah, this is bullshit. Why not pass a bill that forbids commercial broadband providers from cornering the market and disallowing startup competition.

Oh wait, that would fall under anti-trust territory and we all know that "utilities" are basically exempt from that.

Re:Like I have always known...

...it's all about the MONEY!

Nope - it's not about the money. It's about control. This would make my open WiFi node illegal, closing one of the few remaining anonymity gaps on the 'net.

Re:Like I have always known...

I am of the opinion that free enterprise can always provide a service cheper than a government bureaucracy.

Unfortunately, in the majority of these markets it is not "free" enterprise, it is basically a monopoly. If the market can provide the cheaper/faster access people will choose it over the muni access.

Re:Like I have always known...

I am of the opinion that free enterprise can always provide a service cheper than a government bureaucracy.

I disagree with your opinion. :-)
But at least opinions can be changed with facts... it'd be worse if you blindly "believed" it, like many here do.

Thing is, there are areas where non-profit organizations (governments included) can and do provide cheaper (better, more efficient, more complete) service. These are mostly in areas of health care, education and infrastructure. For example, most other western countries are what many rightist politicans would consider "socialistic" health care: such systems provide for better coverage (everyone gets treated, no medical bankruptcy if you get cancer etc. etc.), at about half the price (per-capita health care spending ratio between US and other industrialized countries). Same applies to education (interestingly enough, even the cost ratio is about the same: 2-to-1 in favour of society-sponsored system). And in the infrastructure area (where municipal networks woudl be), even US has government run entities like US Post Office... so there has to be something good in there.

Re:Like I have always known...

So why not make it commercial and charge 1 cent for 1 year. If the law sucks, flex it.

Exposes the lies to cost claims?

If the commercial companies claim that it costs $70/month to serve customers in an area, but a community group manages to do it for $30, what does this mean about the $50/month service that they're 'providing' in the high-profit areas?

It's not just that they don't want municipalities competing against them -- they don't want groups competing against them who have open books.

Re:Exposes the lies to cost claims?

Build a Broadband Co-Op! Just don't make the taxpayer pay for it.

For the most part, it takes something the size of a municipality to put together something that size. Most of these companies already have government-mandated control of our communication -- that's really not too far from tax capability.

Adam Smith considered big business to be roughly the same as big government... Both result in centralized planning, local market inflexibility and sucking capital out of the local market.

A municipal communicatins corporation provides local control of communications capability.

I grew up in Edmonton, Alberta. Ever since the dawn of the Telephone era, they had a municipal telephon company -- once again started because the big players didn't consider a small town in the middle of the praries (early 1900's) worth investing in. The company ran at a profit, and helped to lower Edmonton's taxes.
Now it's owned by Telus -- a multi-provincial conglomerate partly owned by MCI. I really don't see much of an advantage in the new setup.

Some people seem to think that large corporations have some sort of constitutional right to profit -- they don't. The original purpose of corprations was to pool community resources to provide a service to the community. Whether those pooled resources come from Bill Gate's Windows Tax, or a municipal levy doesn't make much of a difference to my pocket book -- either way the money's gonna be coming out of my pocket. With a municipal company, at least most of the profit and control is going to stay local.

If a company feels that my community is worth investing in, then they should do it -- now. If they're not willing to do so, then they shouldn't be getting in the way of anybody else providing the service that they're not willing to -- governmental or otherwise.

Shouldn't it be my choice?

"How can you sit back and trust your local or state government to deliver this service?"

Whether I do or don't is immaterial.

The real question is:

As a resident, as a citizen, isn't it my right to empower my local government to deliver WiFi/Broadband if I desires?

Perhaps I think my local government does do a good job delivering services.

To me, the argument about essential versus non-essential services is interesting, but not at all relevant to the discussion here.