When the City of Austin, Texas promoted an ambitious plan to lay fibre to the door and create a municipal network that any number of operators could use, the 74th Texas Legislature passed a 1995 bill that prevented municipalities from getting involved in telecommunications as part of a larger telecom deregulation bill. Now the Pennsylvania legislature has done something similar, enacting legislation including a prohibition against any political subdivision deploying broadband services - effectively stopping the Wireless Philadelphia project and others like it. The incumbent telecommunications providers obviously support (or drive) initiatives like this, protecting their interests, arguably at the expense of other kinds of economic development that might be fostered by pervasive access to free or cheap broadband services. Do we want all roads across cyberspace to be private toll roads? (Via Xeni at boingboing.
Killing Municipal Wireless
- November 22nd, 2004
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by admin
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Comments
@ 08:33
Philadelphia would have until Jan. 1, 2006, to implement their network to avoid this problem, just by the way. What it might do is incite Pennsylvania municipalities to move into high gear to get installed before that deadline!
@ 12:37
Well, it’s a long shot for any organization, especially a City government to act quickly enough to complete this by January 2006. As the Texas and now the Pennsylvania legislators bow to the telecomms, it’s only the people who lose. Nearly 10 years following her untimely death, it’s especially sad that the vision of Susan G. Hadden to set a public policy course that would make information available to all through a public telecommunications infrastructure appears to be growing dim.
@ 13:54
Harold Feld has an interesting analysis of the Pennsylvania statute — massive subsidy for Verizon!
http://www.wetmachine.com/index.php/item/175
@ 15:35
Good comments. Thank you.
@ 17:19
Gates, wireless i altres
QuiÈn es responsable del spyware
Quants cops en hem fet aquesta pregunta? Sort que existeixen eines que ens ajuden prou a desfer-nos d’aquest mal de cap.
Bill Gates pide al Gobierno espa√íol ‘neutralidad’
Neutralitat? El govern ha d’escol…