Reports Highlighted by MuniNetworks.org

The Media and Democracy Coalition put together an impressive report examining a number of policy options to put communities first in telecommunications infrastructure. The report discusses the fundamental importance of broadband - noting that it enables the right to communicate. Having establishing its importance, the report notes that good policy must be well informed and goes on to make multiple recommendations.

Policy should promote competition, innovation, localism, and opportunity. Locally-owned and -operated networks support these core goals of Federal broadband policy, and therefore should receive priority in terms of Federal support. Structural separation of ownership of broadband infrastructure from the delivery of service over that infrastructure will further promote these goals.

The report also touches on other key issues - including Universal Access, a non-discriminatory Internet (network neutrality), symmetrical connections, and privacy. But the most important focus from our perspective is that of localism:

For decades, American communities — both rural and urban — have been neglected and underserved by absentee-owned networks, whose business models clearly do not work in smaller or economically challenged communities. By contrast, in the communities in which they are based, locally-owned networks are more likely than absentee-owned networks to provide rapid response to emergencies, enhanced services, and value-added, social capital benefits such as job-training, youth-mentoring, and small business incubation. In addition, local networks are less likely to outsource jobs, thereby strengthening local and regional economies, while creating more opportunities for community-based innovation and problem-solving. Federal broadband policy that prioritizes support for local networks will produce more competitive markets, consumer choice, and opportunities for innovation.

This is an interesting interview that explains why mapping is important and how it should be done to ensure the final product is useful for policy. Unfortunately, much of the broadband mapping in the U.S. has been done by a telco-front group called Connected Nation that produces shoddy, unverifiable maps without making any useful data public.

In this report, Gordon Cook interviews Sara Wedeman, a mapping expert who also works in behavioral economics. Cook describes the interview here, on his blog. The discussion ventures beyond mapping, offering keen insights into why universal broadband availability is so important.

At a high level, everyone understands what it means for a network to be open: (1) whatever else it might do, the network offers a pure “transmission” service, so that users can freely communicate with each other; (2) users can connect any devices they want, as long as they don’t harm the network; (3) the network connects to other networks; and (4) the network doesn’t discriminate among users or among the services, information, and applications users want to provide to each other. None of these points should be controversial. The concept of open networks is at least 40 years old in the US. The FCC’s seminal 1968 Carterphone decision held that a network operator may not forbid the use of devices on the network that benefit the user and do not harm the network itself. A decade later the FCC established its equipment registration program requiring interfaces to the telephone network to be standardized and fully disclosed.

Much misinformation has been disseminated about Burlington Telecom (BT).

Here are the facts. BT is a city department of Burlington, Vermont, which owns a fiber-to-the-home network and offers triple play services (phone, cable, internet). The network depends entirely on subscriber revenues and is not subsidized in any form by the City. BT has saved the City money while being built entirely with investor money -- no tax dollars have been or will be used.