Hard to Out-Verizon Verizon, Muni Broadband Advocate Says
Municipalities and other govt. bodies should be able to roll out broadband networks, but are unlikely to perform as well as major cable and telecom firms, Media Access Project Senior Vp Harold Feld said Fri. at an FCBA Wireless Practice Committee lunch. Feld squared off against Tom Lenard, senior fellow at the Progress & Freedom Foundation, who argued that muni broadband efforts drive out private investment.
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“You're never going to do it as well as Verizon or Comcast,” Feld said. “I do not think Montgomery Co. [Md.] will be as good a Verizon as Verizon is and it won’t be as good a Comcast as Comcast is.” Still, Feld said, the federal govt. shouldn’t bar municipal govts. from competing if they want to. Many govts., led by Philadelphia’s, have announced wireless broadband efforts, usually to catcalls from industry.
Passing state or federal laws barring local govts. from getting into broadband is “a far worse cure than any ill that people are going to identify as coming from these municipal Wi-Fi networks,” Feld said. “We should let local people make local decisions about how to spend local money and deploy local services.”
Feld said broadband access must seen as a vital service, comparable to water or garbage pickup. “The Internet is not a luxury, it’s not a toy, it’s not a cool thing,” he said. “It has become… something that is essential for the conduct of business and increasingly for the conduct of daily life.”
Lenard said all evidence so far is that muni broadband programs tend to “hemorrhage money” and that govt.-funded competition keeps private entrants from building out networks. “Municipal telecom is not a good idea,” he said: “It’s not good for the municipality’s citizens and if one is concerned that there’s insufficient investment going into broadband this is exactly the wrong thing to do.”
Lenard said broadband investments are by their nature risky. When the private sector invests, shareholders bear the costs of failure. “That provides powerful incentives to try to avoid mistakes,” he said: “That discipline is not there when the public sector is doing it. When government managers make mistakes taxpayers bear the costs.”