Municipal broadband

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Many towns and cities are concerned about the high cost of broadband Internet access. Municipal broadband, which is broadband Internet service provided (at least partly) through local government support, may offer a solution. The means of connection include Wi-Fi, WiMAX, Line-of-Sight, and Fibre Optic technologies. There are several different models of municipal action which can be categories along the Layered Model of Regulation. In Philadelphia, the municipality is merely providing infrastructure — light posts — to facilitate Earthlink's construction of the network. Earthlink in turn will wholesale network services to third party networks that want to enter the market. Stokab provides network infrastructure; the city installed dark fiber and has several hundred service providers who have lit the fiber and are provided one service or another. The Utopia Project in Utah bounced up one network layer is created a lit fiber network, the capacity of which it is wholesaling to four service providers that provide retail service in the market. A final model is to provide all layers of service, such as Chaska, Minnesota where the city has built and is operating a Wi-Fi Internet network and is providing email and web hosting applications. These different models involve different public-private partnership arrangements, and different levels of opportunity for private sector competition.

A few states have banned municipal broadband, some states have restricted it, and other states have regulated it (requiring prudent business plans and studies). There are three bills before the current Congress that touch on the issue; one would affirm municipal broadband, one would restrict it, and one would prohibit it.

Some incumbent telecommunications and cable companies complain that government competition is unfair while others have viewed it as an opportunity to expand their market. Other organizations such as Free Press, the Media Access Project, and the ACLU have come out in favor of municipal broadband.

The reconstruction of New Orleans was the impetus to build the first municipal Wi-Fi network in the United States. Under the leadership of former city CIO, Greg Meffert, this network was the United States' first truly metro-scale wireless broadband network to provide free public Internet service, and it also provided needed communications for government and emergency services. In an unfortunate turn of events, Bell South threatened the city with legal action if the New Orleans municipal network were continued to be run by the city. Consequently, the network was bought by and is now run by Earthlink.

The Federal Communications Commission, in the year 2000, endorsed municipal broadband as a "best practice" for bringing broadband to underserved communities. 2nd Sec. 706 Report, para 181.

The FCC also addressed the issue when confronted with the question of whether a municipality was an "entity" under the Telecommunications Act. The Telecommunications Act states "No State or local statute or regulation, or other State or local legal requirement, may prohibit or have the effect of prohibiting the ability of any entity to provide any interstate or intrastate telecommunications service." 47 USC 253(a). The legal question presented was whether a state could prevent a municipality (its own subsidiary) from entering the telecommunication market. In the case, Missouri Municipal League v. Nixon, the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that in fact a municipality was not an entity under the Telecommunications Act and that a state could determine what authority its own subordinate jurisdictions had.