What do Tacoma, Provo, Lompoc and soon Philadelphia share in common? All residents there have access to very low-cost, very high-speed Internet service thanks to visionary policy initiatives, known as Municipal Broadband. A recent, hard-won victory in San Francisco suggests the city may finally be on its way to implementing a similar service, if current monopoly broadband providers don’t block it at the state level, as they have in other states.

Broadband is another term for very high-speed Internet. Municipal, or Muni projects, are ones funded or supported by cities and towns.

Building on the successes of smaller activist-run wireless networks in New York and SF, municipal initiatives range from downtown wireless hot-zones, to city-wide networks, to Native American reservations (see sidebar), to city-owned fiber networks connecting homes and businesses to provide ultra high-speed Internet, Cable TV, phone and other digitally delivered services.

All of these efforts are driven by two, increasingly widely-held conclusions:

• Broadband access will be instrumental to communities’ future ability to engage in social and economic development, as well as civic life.
• “Market forces” are not meeting the public needs, especially those of historically under-resourced communities, and it does not appear to be part of their “business plan” to do so.

• Inflated, non-competitive pricing
• Slow-speed and low-bandwidth, dubbed “Tiny-band”
• Privacy concerns - no stated protections for users
• Closed Access – no independent service providers allowed
• Redlining – refusing low-income neighborhoods service (e.g. Bayview-Hunters Point in SF cannot get DSL)

Historically, governments have invested in infrastructure to ensure that all residents have affordable, consistent access to basic services for economic and social development – mail, highways, parks, electricity, water, etc. Rural municipalities and Native American tribal councils are leading these efforts in the United States to provide service to their constituents. (see sidebar)

SF Victory, “Wireless Philadelphia” and the Threat from Big Media

In March, after more than two years of advocacy by Media Alliance and coalition partners, San Francisco’s PUC (Public Utilities Commission) made two historic decisions to advance the possibility of municipal broadband in the city. For the first time, the PUC officially affirmed that broadband and telecommunications services are within their purview. This cleared the way for the second item: the approval of $300,000 allocated in last year’s budget to fund a feasibility study to present several detailed scenarios for implementing a municipal system.

The PUC voted unanimously in favor of this measure, despite strong lobbying against the initiative by the Chamber of Commerce, downtown business groups, SBC and Comcast. Several commissioners cited the importance of calls and e-mails in support from MA members and the compelling presentations by Access SF/Channel 29, the Latino Issues Forum, the California Independent Service Providers’ Association, and TURN – The Utility Reform Network.

But while the PUC vote and support at City Hall appear strong now, advocates familiar with the developments in Philadelphia are girding for a major counter-offensive from the current monopoly providers-–SBC and Comcast-–and their well-connected friends.

Last year, the “Wireless Phialdelphia” initiative was announced with great fanfare by Mayor John F. Street. Following on the heels of an extensive feasibility study and community hearings, he proclaimed Philadelphia would be the biggest U.S. city to deploy a municipal wireless system to bring low-cost, high-speed Internet service to all of its residents.

This didn’t play too well at Comcast corporate headquarters located right across the street from the City Hall. Within hours, Comcast and Verizon lobbyists were working the halls of the state house to push through a bill making it illegal for Pennsylvania municipalities to operate their own networks - blocking the right of cities to provide services to their residents.

After a lengthy, public battle, the bill went through with the compromise that Philadelphia would be exempted from the ban. Since then, big media lobbyists have gotten anti-municipal bills passed in four other states and at least eight more states are currently debating them.

The reason why the Telcos are trying to get these laws passed at the state level is that cities—with the help of small businesses—are building networks that bypass them. And the Telcos have only themselves to blame for ignoring entire communities and continuing to deliver over-priced, low-quality service.

Media Alliance is working with allies nationally and at the state level to monitor bills in Sacramento and preserve California cities’ opportunities to provide for the needs of our communities. We are developing a Bay Area campaign to increase awareness of municipal broadband amongst the public, press and elected officials in our region, and we are building a network of supporters in San Francisco to fight for universal, affordable, high-quality Broadband access for all.

For more information on Municipal Broadband: http://www.muniwireless.com
For updates on the SF initiative and MA’s work: http://www.media-alliance.org

Jeff Perlstein is executive director of Media Alliance.