Officials at the NTIA (the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications & Information Administration), the FCC and the USDA, (yes, the Department of Agriculture) held a meeting earlier this week to begin to decide how to spend the $7.2 billion in “economic stimulus” funds for the rollout of broadband to un-served and underserved areas as mandated by the recently passed, so-called “stimulus bill.”
These expenditures are rife with controversy and potential to harm rather than enhance broadband deployment, but in at least one area the answer should be pretty clear—reject any plans to expand the costly and failed initiatives of municipal broadband networks.
The NTIA should not support the advancement of taxpayer-funded networks. With all of the bailouts and extensive list of pork projects taxpayers are already shouldering, the last thing they should have to pay for is failed municipal broadband projects.
Beginning in 2004, IPI cautioned governments to be careful not to sponsor communications ventures like municipal broadband networks, and in particular, local Wi-Fi projects, and time and experience have proven us correct. As detailed in “We Told You So: Continue to Say No to Municipal Broadband Networks,” municipal broadband has been plagued by failure nearly every time it has been attempted, and at great cost to taxpayers.
The major problem: Technology innovation continues to far outpace the speed of government and because of that, government cannot compete with market efforts. Technology infrastructure investment is not for the faint of heart or the partially committed. One must jump in with both feet, update and innovate, not only the technology but the business models as well. And that is just to keep even with competitors. As online services become more sophisticated, customers have become accustomed to regular upgrades, challenging the ability of governments to keep up with demand.
If policymakers must sponsor any initiative to deploy broadband technology, they should instead support the expansion of broadband into truly unserved, underserved, (usually) rural areas.
When municipal broadband networks fail, it is the taxpayers who must pay for the loss. Municipal broadband systems have been expensive government failures in cities including (but not limited to) Philadelphia, Chicago, Portland and Orlando.
Let’s not throw good (or at least new) taxpayer dollars after bad municipal broadband networks.