Marcia Oddi over at the Indiana Law Blog has a post entitled The Indiana Law Blog: Ind. Gov’t. – More on cities offering broadband to their residents. This is a recurring issue around the country. I heard about it first in Philadelphia. Indiana has had some legislation dealing with the subject. Now, according to the story linked at ILB, New Orleans is catching some heat from Bell South over its plans to deploy a city-wide wireless broadband “for free” (tax supported, obviously) to its citizens. In a nice public relations move:
Hours after New Orleans officials announced Tuesday that they would deploy a city-owned, wireless Internet network in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, regional phone giant BellSouth Corp. withdrew an offer to donate one of its damaged buildings that would have housed new police headquarters, city officials said yesterday.
According to the officials, the head of BellSouth’s Louisiana operations, Bill Oliver, angrily rescinded the offer of the building in a conversation with New Orleans homeland security director Terry Ebbert, who oversees the roughly 1,650-member police force.
City officials said BellSouth was upset about the plan to bring high-speed Internet access for free to homes and businesses to help stimulate resettlement and relocation to the devastated city.
ILB has covered the issue on several other occasions, including here and here.
Senator Ford’s SB 381-2005 sought to address the government provided broadband issue. I don’t think it passed in any form, but back on 2/28/05, I described it this way:
This bill essentially does two things – it sets up a coordinating body to determine the feasibility of implementing a statewide broadband system that would be used by political subdivisions, schools and colleges, state & local police and emergency management agencies, and community networks, as well as local or publicly funded hospitals and certified technology parks. Extra capacity could be sold to anyone else at cost, subject to certain priorities. The second thing it does is set up a Indiana Broadband Development Program which will first inquire to determine which areas are underserved. If there is no broadband service within 3 months of the inquiry, the area is underserved. An organization in an underserved area can get the Development Program to borrow money on its behalf for the purpose of providing broadband service.
I suspected opposition at that time because: “the telecommunication companies don’t like this bill because it could take away potentially lucrative government contracts and doesn’t allow them an indefinite period in which to cherry-pick the potentially profitable broadband areas.” As a policy matter I think government provided broadband is a great idea. I’m generally a limited government kind of guy, but for infrastructure, I tend to support a strong government presence. I started thinking this way when I first heard about Henry Clay and his “American System.” Government development of infrastructure almost always seems to yield dividends for the public. (Public highways seem to be better for economic development than toll roads.) So, I see a public broadband system as a relatively cheap way for the government to improve its economic base. Sure, it will cost folks like Bell South some money, but I’m not going to cry a river for a company that got to where it is through a government imposed monopoly.
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