Telecoms giants oppose cities on web access. Once again, the SBC’s of the world would rather play politics than provide true high speed connectivity. 100mbps (100x faster than my home dsl line) is available in Japan and Korea for 35\/month….. I wonder what the implications are for Madison and Dane County’s wireless plans?<\/p>\n
\nNovember 23, 2004
\nTELECOMMUNICATIONS
\nTelecom Giants Oppose Cities On Web Access
\nhttp:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/0,,SB110116864041881375,00.html
\nBy JESSE DRUCKER
\nStaff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
\nNovember?23,?2004;?Page?B1
\nDozens of cities and towns across the country are rushing to provide
\nlow- or no-cost wireless Internet access to their residents, but the
\nlarge phone and cable companies, fearful of losing a lucrative market,
\nare fighting back by pushing states to pass legislation that could make
\nit illegal for municipalities to offer the service.
\nOver the past few months, several big cities — including Philadelphia
\nand San Francisco — have announced plans to cover every square block
\nwith wireless Internet access via the popular technology known as
\nWi-Fi, short for wireless fidelity. Cities say these plans will spur
\neconomic development and help bridge the digital divide, making Web
\naccess nearly ubiquitous.
\nBut that’s bad news for the large Bell telephone companies and cable
\noperators, who are looking to their digital-subscriber-line (DSL) and
\ncable-modem businesses for growth. Wi-Fi, technically known as 802.11,
\ntakes existing high-speed Internet connections and wirelessly extends
\nthem by several hundred feet, allowing dozens or even hundreds of
\npeople to share one subscription.
\nPhiladelphia announced during the summer that it would hook up the
\nentire city with Wi-Fi. Its current Wi-Fi service is free, but it
\nhasn’t decided whether that would continue with wider deployment; it
\nmay charge a small fee. “There are some very specific goals that the
\ncity has that are not met by the private sector: affordable, universal
\naccess and the digital divide,” says Dianah Neff, the city’s chief
\ninformation officer. She says that less than 60% of the city’s
\nneighborhoods have broadband access.
\nHowever, last week, after intensive lobbying by Verizon Communications
\nInc., the Pennsylvania General Assembly passed a bill with a deeply
\nburied provision that would make it illegal for any “political
\nsubdivision” to provide to the public “for any compensation any
\ntelecommunications services, including advanced and broadband services
\nwithin the service territory of a local exchange telecommunications
\ncompany operating under a network-modernization plan.” Verizon is the
\nlocal exchange telecommunications company for most of Pennsylvania, and
\nit is planning to modernize the region using high-speed fiber-optic
\ncable. The bill has 10 days for the governor to sign it or veto it.
\nThe Pennsylvania bill follows similar legislative efforts earlier this
\nyear by telephone companies in Utah, Louisiana and Florida to prevent
\nmunicipalities from offering telecommunications services, which could
\ninclude fiber and Wi-Fi.
\nCritics denounce this legislative tactic, arguing that the U.S. lags
\nbehind other countries in broadband Internet access because the phone
\nand cable companies have been slow to roll out the service in some
\nareas.
\n“We should be encouraging our municipalities to take a major role in
\nbroadband, the way other countries are doing,” says James Baller, an
\nattorney in Washington, D.C., who represents local governments on
\ntelecommunications issues.
\nThe telecom companies argue that it is unfair for them to have to
\ncompete against the government. They say that the legislation enables
\nthem to improve service to their customers by investing in their
\nnetworks. “If we put that money at risk, and here comes government to
\ncompete against us, with advantages that government has — not paying
\ntaxes, access to capital at good rates … that severely limits the
\nopportunity and limits our interest in taking the risk,” says Eric
\nRabe, a spokesman for Verizon. Pennsylvania Gov. Edward G. Rendell has
\nuntil November 30 to act on the bill, and hasn’t said yet which route
\nhe will choose.
\nTelephone companies have long used local legislative muscle to stave
\noff competition. After Congress passed the landmark Telecom Act in
\n1996, which required local telephone providers to open their networks
\nto allow competition, several municipalities, including some municipal
\npower companies, sought to offer telephone service. After extensive
\nlobbying by the Bell telephone companies, roughly a dozen states passed
\nlaws prohibiting municipalities from offering telecommunications
\nservices. Currently, 621 municipal power utilities around the country
\nprovide some kind of advanced communication service, including
\ntelephone, high-speed Internet access and cable television, according
\nto the American Public Power Association; a minority of these utilities
\nsell those services to the general public.
\nThe U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year found that such legislation
\nwas legal, so cities and towns are particularly anxious to quash such
\nlegislation before it gets passed.
\nThe tactic is being revived by the increasing interest in using Wi-Fi
\nto spread broadband access, as well as interest in fiber. Wi-Fi
\nequipment maker Tropos Networks Inc. says it has supplied gear for
\npublic networks in roughly 50 towns and cities, including Philadelphia,
\nLos Angeles, and Corpus Christi, Texas. Scottsburg, Ind., last year
\nbuilt a network using a different type of wireless technology that
\ncovers nearly all of the surrounding county’s residents, using
\nequipment from Alvarion Ltd.
\nEarlier this year, the attempts by local telephone companies BellSouth
\nCorp. and Qwest Communications International Inc. to push for severe
\nrestrictions on municipal broadband service in Louisiana and Utah ended
\nin compromise, in some cases with existing plans being allowed to
\ncontinue but new plans limited.
\nThe legislative provision in Pennsylvania — a small portion of a much
\nlarger telecommunications bill that gives telephone companies
\nincentives to modernize their networks — was originally prompted by
\nthe fiber deployment of a small town called Kutztown. But people
\ninvolved in the legislative process say the provision took on added
\nimportance for legislators and the state’s big phone companies after
\nPhiladelphia announced its Wi-Fi plans.
\nCities have been able to deploy Wi-Fi relatively cheaply: Philadelphia
\nsays it set up its initial wireless zone for $85,000, paid out of the
\ncity’s budget. The city-wide offering is expected to cost $10 million,
\nand could be paid for by a combination of borrowing, private donations
\nor selling rights to the poles on which the Wi-Fi equipment will be
\ndeployed.
\nThe annual cost of operating the system is expected to be roughly $1.5
\nmillion. Since the city has said the plan would be “cost neutral,” a
\nprohibition on levying any fee for the service could make it tough to
\ndeploy. “That’s been made more difficult by current legislation,” says
\nMs. Neff. However, she adds: “It’s not stopping us. It may have
\neliminated some options.”
\nThe city deploys its current system much like a larger version of a
\nwireless setup in a Starbucks coffee shop: A high-speed line connects
\nto a wireless antenna mounted on a light pole that essentially sprays
\nout the connection for several hundred feet.
\nUnlike high-speed connections into people’s homes — a service
\ndominated in Philadelphia by Verizon — the city could choose a variety
\nof high-speed access providers for its Wi-Fi offerings, including MCI
\n,Sprint Corp. and Level 3 Communications Inc.
\nThe Pennsylvania bill, first introduced in 2003, was passed by the
\nstate Senate late Thursday night and then passed for a second time by
\nthe state House of Representatives late Friday night by wide margins.
\nSenate supporters agreed with Verizon’s view of the legislation. Don
\nHouser, a spokesman for Senator Jake Corman, the Senate sponsor of the
\nbill, said “the thinking was the telephone companies didn’t want to
\nhave local municipalities using tax dollars to compete with private
\ndollars.”
\nVerizon spokesman Mr. Rabe says the legislation is not a giveaway — it
\nalso contains incentives for the phone company to deploy broadband
\nservice throughout the state, which he says will cost hundreds of
\nmillions of dollars. The bill also has a grandfather clause, giving an
\nopening to providers who have some types of service in place before
\nJan. 1, 2006, but it is unclear how that would affect Philadelphia’s
\nplans.
\nWrite to Jesse Drucker at jesse.drucker@wsj.com 4<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Telecoms giants oppose cities on web access. Once again, the SBC’s of the world would rather play politics than provide true high speed connectivity. 100mbps (100x faster than my home dsl line) is available in Japan and Korea for 35\/month….. I wonder what the implications are for Madison and Dane County’s wireless plans?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}