[IP] more on WI-FI RUN BY CITIES: YEA OR NAY?
Begin forwarded message:
From: Bob Frankston <Bob2-19-0501@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: January 9, 2006 1:19:00 PM EST
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx, ip@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: "'Dewayne Hendricks'" <dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Harold Feld
<hfeld@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: RE: [IP] WI-FI RUN BY CITIES: YEA OR NAY?
The short summary – PFF is utterly clueless about the Internet. They
see services rather than connectivity. Debating them on their terms
gives them far too much credibility. The cities themselves don’t
fully understand connectivity but the PFF exacerbates the problems by
misframing the issues rather than helping find solutions.
Once again I need to repeat the basic points because organizations
like the PFF seem to be fear progress and freedom and only see the
world in terms of corporations without being able to understand
marketplaces. A corporation is just a mechanism and not an end in
itself.
I presume that the PFF also opposed roads, police services, fire
departments and other money losing services. Firefighters should only
provide services if they can make a profit.
Skimming the report it seems that Tom Lenard doesn’t understand the
concept of the Internet and can only see connectivity packaged as
services provided by omniscient telecom companies. He doesn't have
the concept of people defining services at the edge. The very
assumption that this is about telecom shows that he’s fifty years
behind the times.
Somehow he thinks that telecom companies' spending money on redundant
high cost infrastructures represents disciplined spending rather than
an extreme example of corporate welfare and privilege.
The basic problem, as I keep pointing out, that you can't pay for a
public good like connectivity by charging based on the intrinsic
value of each bit.
Too bad cities accept some of the guilting and try to provide for
connectivity on a pay-as-you go basis rather than as fundamental
infrastructure. Thus we get municipal cable TV systems rather than
connectivity because Tom’s ilk requires direct funding. Cities aren’t
good at such services and in trying to meet Tom’s demands they give
him examples to use against them. It's like failing to fund education
because the voters aren't attending school themselves and see value
in educating others. They can see no connection between their
inability to get competent help and their refusal to educate.
Progress and Freedom Foundation is a strange name for an organization
that sees progress only in the rear view mirror and freedom only in
terms of Mr Hobson's choice -- you can get any horse as long as it's
the lame one over there.
It's not just that the cities have a right to step in; they have a
responsibility to provide connectivity not because they are the
government but simply because they are a mechanism for collective
action. It's no different from a group of tenants getting together to
purchase connectivity in bulk. The city is the way that people can
get together to buy connectivity and the city is also a consumer of
connectivity. Or does he oppose any attempt to innovate around the
incumbents?
Finally, it's not at all clear that connectivity costs anything when
you compare it with overpaying for artificial scarcity and then
paying again for each municipal service having its own infrastructure.
Worse then not being able to build roads is building special roads
for each municipal service and then banning profit use.
-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber [mailto:dave@xxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Monday, January 09, 2006 12:23
To: ip@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [IP] WI-FI RUN BY CITIES: YEA OR NAY?
Begin forwarded message:
From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: January 9, 2006 11:24:09 AM EST
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <dewayne-net@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] WI-FI RUN BY CITIES: YEA OR NAY?
Reply-To: dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
WI-FI RUN BY CITIES: YEA OR NAY?
[SOURCE: C-Net|News.com, AUTHOR: Anne Broache]
At a debate on Friday over municipal broadband networks, Harold Feld
of the Media Access Project squared off against Tom Lenard of the
Progress and Freedom Foundation. Not only should city governments
have the unrestricted ability to create their own wireless broadband
networks, but they should also consider baking broadband plans into
disaster recovery scenarios, argued Mr. Feld. "At this point I think
most of us recognize that the Internet is not a luxury," Feld said.
"It has become something essential for the conduct of business and
even the conduct of everyday life." But Lenard said the track record
of cities' involvement in similar ventures is "not happy." The
evidence, he said, lies in several studies, one of which he authored,
that point to money-losing telecommunications firms run by local
governments. "None have been able to cover their costs without being
subsidized" by taxpayer money or rate hikes in other public utility
bills, such as electricity and water, he said. Lenard added that
large scale wireless broadband networks remain experimental enough to
warrant caution. "When the private sector makes bets on one
technology or another, it's disciplined by the shareholders," a
process that he said tends to occur more efficiently than waiting to
vote someone out of office. But Feld argued that that's missing the
point of municipalities' involvement in the first place. Cities are
right to step in where "there's a valuable social good or economic
benefit that would be distributed if somebody did this, and there's
not a rate of return sufficient to attract the private sector" -- for
instance, in low-income or rural areas. Local governments should view
the devastation of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita as a lesson, Feld said.
<http://news.com.com/Wi-Fi+run+by+cities+Yea+or+nay/
2100-1028_3-6022185.html?tag=nefd.top>
Weblog at: <http://weblog.warpspeed.com>
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