Network management Toolkit

The battles of community broadband

Jim Hu and Marguerite Reardon CNET News

Published: 09 May 2005 18:35 BST

What are cities doing?
Many communities remain undeterred. Larger cities such as Philadelphia and Chicago claim broadband is too expensive for lower-income residents.

In March, officials in Chicago threw down the gauntlet against the state of Illinois when they announced plans to consider blanketing the entire metropolis with Wi-Fi. Just as in Philadelphia and Lafayette, lawmakers promoting this plan think that cheap broadband is good for residents and offers an additional source of revenue for city coffers.

"It's our responsibility to protect the interests of citizens of Chicago, and if we feel a Wi-Fi system would open up opportunities to provide cheaper access, why wouldn't we examine it, and why should we be told by Springfield that we can't?" said Donal Quinlan, a spokesman for Chicago Alderman Edward Burke.

The UK has a number of projects with similar scope. Local efforts to try and bring broadband to areas not covered by BT's network have run into trouble with the telco in the past, but a recent project to bring free Wi-Fi to Islington had more success.

Smaller communities such as Scottsburg, Indiana, and Lafayette hope that citywide broadband systems will attract more businesses and spark entrepreneurship.

Lafayette's economy over the last century has been tied to the oil industry. But as oil reserves in the Gulf of Mexico run down, city leaders recognise that they need to attract new industries to the community to sustain growth. A fibre-based broadband network could help attract manufacturing-design companies and software developers, said Kaliste Saloom, an attorney in Lafayette who organised the Lafayette Yes political action group to campaign for the new fibre network.

"We have a great computer science program right here in Lafayette at the University of Louisiana," he said. "So we already have the talent. If we have the high-speed broadband network, it would be easy for companies to tap that resource and open development facilities here."

Then there's the string of cities hugging Utah's Great Salt Lake that have begun constructing a fibre-optic network. Called the Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency, the project aims to pipe video, phone service and broadband Internet access into peoples' homes. Organisers draw analogies to airports, for which governments fund facilities and private companies operate their businesses using the space.

Utopia's executive director, Paul Morris, told an audience at the Voice on the Net conference this month that the project has already attracted some private companies, including AT&T. One Utah-based ISP plans to begin offering 10Mbps of broadband speed for $39.95 a month. Cable broadband at less than half that speed costs about $45 a month, while many cheaper DSL services from the Bells provide 1.5mbps at the base service tier.

"We were concerned we were being left behind," Morris said. "We wanted to lure businesses and nurture them in Utah, and we didn't see that happening for us."