[CAnet - news] Municipal Broadband - Beware of Geeks bearing Gifts

For more information on this item please visit my blog at 
http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/
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[In the past few weeks there have been several good reports on municipal
broadband.  Two from Reason magazine and one recently published by the
Swedish Government - IT Policy Strategy Group - "Broadband for growth,
innovation and competitiveness".  I highly recommend the later report as it
is a well articulated argument why governments (municipal and national)
should focus on the build out of "passive" infrastructure to enable
broadband for all. Passive infrastructure includes conduit, support
structure on poles, and sometime the enabling of condominium dark fiber
networks where government agencies, schools and hospitals act as anchor
tenants.

Although there are many good examples of successful municipal broadband
projects, particularly in smaller communities around the world, I worry that
many of these in time will suffer the fate of iProvo as documented in the
Reason report.  Already we are starting to see companies offer free
broadband services (up to 2 Mbps) such as Sky in the UK.  I suspect, in the
not too distant future you will see companies offering free fiber to the
home. The companies offering these free services will make their money
through innovative new business models.  This will demonstrate once again
that the  private sector can be far more innovative than the public sector
in delivering these types of services. I, for one, would not want to be the
owner of a municipal broadband network competing against free broadband from
the private sector.

However, I do believe municipalities and other levels of government can play
a critical role in enabling the deployment of broadband by the private
sector, especially the creation of a playing field. Two good examples I
often cite is the CSEVM in Montreal where the city provides open conduit
throughout the city to all telecommunication carriers. The other example is
"@22" in Barcelona where the city has not only provided open conduit, but
also open and secure equipment space in each city block where carriers can
locate their equipment, etc.

But even if municipalities chose not to deploy such elaborate facilities
they can still make a difference. There are many small things that
municipalities and governments can do immediately  to enable faster rollout
of broadband and create level playing fields. They include:

(a) Placing open conduit under all freeways, overpasses, railway crossings,
canals and bridges. These facilities are usually a costly roadblock for many
fiber deployment companies.

(b) Allow overlashing of fiber on existing aerial fiber structures.
Overlashing can dramatically reduce costs of fiber deployment.

(c) Forcing existing owners of conduit such as electrical companies,
telephone companies, etc to make 100% of their conduit accessible to 3rd
parties, especially that capacity supposedly  reserved for future use, and
then coordinate construction of new conduit between all parties when the
spare capacity is truly all used up.

(d) Coordinate construction of all new conduit, especially building
entrances to minimize the "serial rippers" and make all such conduit open to
3rd parties. 

Thanks to Kevin Barron for the pointer to the Reason reports and Patrik
Falstrom for the Swedish Government IT report -- BSA]


Swedish Government IT report:
http://www.regeringen.se/sb/d/6320/a/73823

The Reason reports:
http://www.reason.org/ps349polsum.pdf
www.reason.org/ps353.pdf


The first Reason study is by Jerry Ellig, former deputy director and acting
director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Office of Policy Planning.
He warns city officials to “beware of geeks bearing gifts” 

The second Reason study is on iProvo and claims that they are digging
themselves in deeper every year.



>From recent study on broadband by City of Ottawa

"Montreal has the reputation across the carrier industry of "getting it
right". All carriers that operate there praise the ease of access and the
low cost of duct rental.

Montreal created an agency called the "Commission des Services Électriques
de la Ville de Montreal" (CSEVM) in 1907 to emphasize urban design and to
adapt to changing technological requirements as the city grew and to
contribute to the beautification of the city's streets and public places. 

The CSEVM has the mandate to operate the whole underground space. It builds,
manages and operates the system of underground conduits. 

Since that beginning the City now has 19.2 million metres of linear
conduits, covering 623 of the city's 2,123 kilometres of streets. It
provides direct accesses to 38,500 private and public buildings through more
than 18,000 access facilities. 

The City operates in the role of standardizing construction, consolidating
demand from various sources and building additional space for the City to
rent out to others. The City shares the capital cost with all and engineers
additional capacity for resell. The City is also very active on retrofitting
duct banks that are filled by adding additional internal ducts to be used.
The primary advantage to the building partners is in cost reduction of duct
construction. 

The end result is that the carriers have only the highest of praise for
Montreal as a territory in which they operate and the costs of duct rental
are $3.65 per metre."



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These news items and comments are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect
those  of the CANARIE board or management.


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