Glenn Fleishman at WiFiNet News points to a long Washington Monthly essay by media reform advocate Robert McChesney and John Podesta, former Clinton Chief of Staff and now President and CEO of the Center for American Progress. The essay closes with the following conclusion, which Fleishman calls “a doozy and a winner.” Given Podesta’s background and current position, the conclusion strikes me as a potential Democratic campaign theme in the 2006 and/or 2008 elections.
Simply empowering local governments and community groups, in coordination with private entrepreneurs, to provide universal affordable, broadband may be the single best thing we can do to make America the pre-eminent economy—and democracy—of the 21st century.
To help make their point, McChesney and Podesta draw parallels between broadband today and electric power roughly a century ago:
[C]ommunities that didn’t have electricity couldn’t produce as much, and couldn’t keep up with urban competitors. Rural communities were left with the choice of forming a government-owned utility or being left in the dark. Even big cities like Detroit built municipal power systems to cut prices and extend service. In response, private utility companies responded with a massive propaganda and misinformation campaign that attacked advocates of municipal power as “un-American,” “Bolshevik,” and “an unholy alliance of radicals.”
In 1935, [FDR] created the Rural Electrification Administration (REA), which gave loans and other help to small towns and farmer cooperatives interested in setting up their own power systems. The REA turned out to be one of the New Deal’s most successful programs. Within two years, hundreds of new municipal power utilities were up and running across the country, and within 20 years, virtually all of rural America had electricity [and]…municipally owned electric utilities and rural electric cooperatives…still account for more than a quarter of the power in the country today.
They also compare US broadband development to Japan and South Korea:
American residents and businesses now pay two to three times as much for slower and poorer quality service than countries like South Korea or Japan. Since 2001, according to the International Telecommunications Union, the United States has fallen from fourth to 16th in the world in broadband penetration. Thomas Bleha recently argued in Foreign Affairs that what passes for broadband in the United States is “the slowest, most expensive and least reliable in the developed world.”…most Japanese citizens can access a high-speed connection that’s more than 10 times faster than what’s available here for just $22 a month.
The economic ramifications are profound. “Asians will have the first crack at developing the new commercial applications, products, services, and content of the high-speed-broadband era,” writes Bleha. Already, South Korea, which leads the world in the percentage of its businesses and homes with broadband, is the number one developer of online video games—perhaps the fastest-growing industry today…
The countries surpassing the United States in broadband deployment did so by using a combination of public entities and private firms. The Japanese built their world-class system by ensuring “open access” to residential telephone lines, meaning competitors paid the same wholesale price to use the wires. The country is also establishing a super-fast, nationwide fiber system via a combination of tax breaks, debt guarantees and subsidies. But of particular note, the Japanese government also encouraged municipalities to build their own networks, especially in rural areas. Towns and villages willing to set up their own ultra-high-speed fiber networks received government subsidies covering approximately one-third of their costs.
The authors also challenge incumbent arguments against what they call “Community Internet.”
Community Internet has the potential to revolutionize and democratize communications in this country. And that may be the reason why big cable and telephone companies and their political allies have launched a sophisticated misinformation campaign…First, they contend that municipalities have no place in the “free market.” Of course, the cable and telephone giants don’t mention that their own monopolies—which control 98 percent of the broadband market—have been cemented with extensive public subsidies, tax breaks and incentives (as well as free rein to tear up city streets). Verizon, for instance, didn’t complain last fall when Pennsylvania handed them subsidies for broadband deployment worth nearly 10 times what Wireless Philadelphia will cost. Neither did Comcast object when Philadelphia approved a $30 million grant to build a skyscraper that will house its headquarters.
[C]ritics of Community Internet claim that cities are too “lazy” or inefficient to manage complex systems and will be unable to adapt to changing technologies. But municipalities have a long track record of successfully and efficiently operating power plants, sewage systems and subways. It’s hard to imagine that the broadband networks—most of which will actually be operated by private contractors—are any more complex. Perhaps the more obvious question is: If these systems are destined to fail, why are the telephone and cable companies expending so much energy trying to stop them?
And they offer some suggestions for federal policymakers:
Congress could boost the speed and reliability of community wireless networks by making available more “unlicensed spectrum”—those portions of the public airwaves not exclusively reserved for government or commercial use. Exisiting “Wi-Fi” networks operate in “junk bands” cluttered with signals from cordless phones, microwave ovens, baby monitors and other consumer devices. At lower frequencies-–like in the television band-—signals travel farther and can go through walls, trees and mountains. Opening up some of this spectrum would make Community Internet systems much faster and cheaper to deploy, allowing a new generation of broadband entrepreneurs to enter the market. The broadcasters are about to return a sizable chunk of spectrum as part of the digital television transition, a portion of which could be reserved for Community Internet if Congress doesn’t auction it all off to the cell phone companies. Another option would be to reallocate vast, unused “white spaces” between TV channels for wireless broadband. Either way, more “unlicensed spectrum” is the key to making universal, super-fast broadband for $10 a month a reality.
Most importantly, the federal government must ensure that the cable and telephone monopolies can’t crush innovative projects like Wireless Philadelphia and the emerging national movement for Community Internet. Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) have introduced a bill that would free municipalities to decide for themselves which technologies best serve their citizens. U.S. policy should create incentives for communities to build advanced telecommunications networks in hundreds of cities and towns across the country, creating robust competition for communications services, assisting small entrepreneurs through public-private partnerships, and bringing opportunity to low-income urban neighborhoods and rural communities too often neglected by large entrenched monopolies.
Mitch Shapiro at 12:37 AM|Comments(0)
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