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November 16, 2005
Huh?! Municipal proponents rip San Francisco’s free wireless plan
The muni loonies are at a loss. Despite the fact that municipal wireless is breaking out all over, it's not going the way it is supposed to.
In San Francisco, Google has proposed to build municipal network at no cost to the city and offer free service to consumers to boot. Yet organizations such as Media Alliance and Community Technology Foundation of California, which have long-demanded cheap broadband alternatives for those who can't afford incumbent prices, say that approach is all wrong.
Instead, they want broadband service through a taxpayer-funded, bureaucratic, non-competitive city agency that runs eternal deficits. Rather than experiment with bold market-based initiatives that might provide free broadband Internet access, these groups are pushing for same types of systems that have done little but drain the resources of Dalton,.Ga.; Ashland, Ore.; Lebanon, Ohio; and Provo, Utah.
But then again, the municipal wireless movement has always had an anti-business agenda. It was a lot easier when they could bash the telephone and cable companies, which make easy and popular targets. But the arrival of genuine market-based competition has forced them to expand their sweep to the point of absurdity. Every enterprise doing business in the wireless space is now a potential monopolist. Even two-year-old start-ups like AnchorFree Wireless threaten the democracy and free-flow nature of the Internet.
Who is AnchorFree? Here’s an excerpt from its web site:
“Sunnyvale, CA based AnchorFree was founded in 2003 with the vision to move beyond the paid wireless Internet (Wi-Fi) access model and provide consumers with free widespread Internet access.”
What's got muni proponents in San Francisco in a huff is the city’s decision to allow Google, EarthLink, Cingular Wireless--and tiny AnchorFree--to redact details of the municipal wireless business models spelled out in there responses to a Request for Information and Content issued this summer. AnchorFree was regarded as the worst offender because, according to the San Francisco Bay Guardian, it asked the city to withhold release of its entire response. That’s not an unreasonable request considering who its competitors are.
Keep in mind that these were not contract bids – merely concepts that might have been backed by strategic thinking and closely-held market research that, for obvious reasons, these companies want to keep proprietary. San Francisco technology activists are using this as a pretext to call for as series of public hearings, the creation of a “community advisory council” and time consuming ways for the city to gather public “input.”
It's nothing but a red herring to delay the process. It doesn’t take long to see what peeves these folks most is that the free market, not a costly government program, is poised to create alternatives that will improve broadband penetration and close the digital divide faster and more efficiently than any government program could. Profit is the worse sin of all. In an editorial on the redactions in the same issue as the article cited above, the Bay Guardian went into high dudgeon about the city’s TechConnect program’s accommodation of the private sector:
“That's a terrible way to start this process and an indication of the problems that are almost inevitable if Silicon Valley companies are running the show. The high-tech world thrives on a culture of secrecy. None of these firms are charitable operations – they're looking to make money.”
Further down it demands,
“The city ought to create a municipal WiFi utility and run the entire system itself.”
They are not isolated. In Minnesota, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (which would be more aptly named the Institute for Local Government Reliance) is appalled that Minneapolis has named EarthLink and U.S. Internet as finalists for the city's wireless project. It, too, thinks government ownership and investment is a better approach.
Despite what they say, for the muni set the real goal is not free wireless, more broadband alternatives and closing the digital divide. What these organizations want, literally at all costs, is government-run broadband service. If the private sector succeeds in delivering free broadband, it crumbles their government-is-needed-because-the-market-has-failed doctrine. That’s why whether you’re Google with an $87 million market cap, or AnchorFree, a start-up still in its initial rounds of venture capital funding, you are a threat that must be stopped.
Posted by steve.titch at November 16, 2005 09:54 AM
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Comment by: Sten94237 at February 6, 2007 07:57 AM
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