Municipal Broadband: What do people think about it?

I used Google Advanced Scholar to look up some more dependable articles, and by dependable, I mean relatively unbiased. I searched ‘municipal broadband and poor communities’ only in 3 groups of subjects:

- [Engineering, Computer Science, and Mathematics]

- [Social Sciences, Arts, and Humanities]

- [Business Admin, Finance, and Economics]

I found the article, Municipal Wi-Fi; Big Wave or Wipe Out? It is written by Steve Ruth, a professor at George Mason University, and grad student, James Gibbons. It is edited by Elisa Bertino and Ruth. Published in 2006, it gives many perspectives the effects of municipal broadband from the standpoint of “municipalities, providers, and legislators.”

They analyzed particular cases around the U.S. that address issues such as the high cost of installing municipal wireless technologies, which put some cities in debt. Yet while the initial cost may be detrimental, there are cases where only time will show an increase in revenue. In a case in Tacoma, WA (my hometown!), “MuniWi-Fi’s detractors didn’t
allow adequate time spans when judging returns on investment or report the increased price and speed competition in these communities.”

The wireless providers also have a say. Like any company, a provider will be skeptical in entering into a long-term agreement. They depend on the market situation on whether to enter into contract with cities looking for municipal wi-fi—“if the market for these services rises to the billion-dollar level in a few years…there’s a definite opportunity for profit.”

It also gives additional research options that lead to key references they used in the article which includes both commercial and governmental sites.

The article is posted in the Internet Computing online journal, which is funded by the IEEE. IEEE Xplore is an online technological library that has journals, articles, and other resources.

Here’s the URL for the site: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=1631980

The second time I wanted to get a more specific perspective. By looking at the references in the previous article, the Wall Street Journal came up quite a bit. I figured that The Economist might have a slightly different opinion. I’ve read some other articles from this publication that have given some more striking observations.

I searched Google using municipal broadband site: economist.com and found one story. It takes a critical view of the technology of Muni Wi-fi, pointing out its flaws like availability of fast service in comparison to private wireless connection, particularly picking on Anaheim’s new plan to introduce a city-wide plan. They complain, “Outside, there are the added problems of foliage, tall buildings and hills. These can reflect, absorb or otherwise interfere with a municipal Wi-Fi’s signal.” They also point out that wireless services run on unlicensed radio waves, meaning “that there are many PCs jostling for access. Adding to the mayhem are the domestic appliances, like cordless phones and microwave ovens, that radiate in the same frequency band.”

The Economist article also claims that consumers are not the ones pushing the development of these large networks (in comparison to policy-makers). “In almost all cases, however, the reigning philosophy was “build it and they will come.” I was skeptical of this claim, because the consumers who are benefiting the most from municipal broadband are not those who already have service.

Here is the URL: www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9244199

The Economist is funded by consumer interest and various consulting agencies including other advertisers.

The author of this article is not mentioned. It was published in 2007.

I searched a third time using the same format as the last, hoping to get some more critique on the infrastructure based around municipal broadband. I retrieved an article that looked promising and talked about the importance of ownership by the community, rather than the company/policy-makers. However, it lacked resources and I didn’t recognize the organization. The organization was called “Institute for Local Self Reliance.”