The San Francisco Bay Guardian makes a plea for broadband infrastructure that is not controlled and owned by private companies but by the city. They compare broadband infrastructure to public works projects:The San Francisco Bay Guardian makes a plea for broadband infrastructure that is not controlled and owned by private companies but by the city. They compare broadband infrastructure to public works projects:
But even according to the Google-EarthLink consortium’s own estimates, the universal wi-fi network will cost only about $10 million. For a big-city public works project, that’s nothing. Almost every election, we approve another $100 million or so in bonds — for schools, community college buildings, libraries, parks, and police stations, all worthwhile projects. The city’s annual budget is more than $5 billion, and the cost of maintaining the network would run at about $2 million a year. This could turn out to be as important as anything the city ever builds — and it’s chump change.
Private sports teams = public infrastructure
The SF Bay Guardian forgot to mention how much money cities and regions splurge on sports. It amazes me that people don’t even question taxpayer money going to football teams — direct public subsidy of something that does not even remotely resemble public infrastructure (see Dan Gillmor’s piece on the SF 49ers in Santa Clara). Where’s the public outrage against wasting this kind of money on a sports team made up of overpaid athletes? Does this contribute to the education and health of the community?
If your mayor and city council say they cannot spend taxpayer money on public broadband, ask them how much of your tax money they kindly “donated” to the local football, baseball, basketball and ice hockey teams. Ask them also how much time they spend in those luxury sky boxes.
It’s time to separate infrastructure from services
A number of commentators have been demanding that cities build and own wired and wireless broadband networks, even if they have to outsource the operation of the networks to private companies. Under this model, ownership of the infrastructure will be separate from the services (e.g. Internet access) that run on it.
It is attractive because it will create more competition on the services layer. How about a network owned by the city, but with several ISPs, including AT&T, Verizon and EarthLink, leasing capacity and delivering services to end users? Add local independent ISPs and you’ve got competition.
Actually, the Bay Guardian’s been very critical of the various giveaways to sports teams. Even as the Mayor’s people rush to ram through the Earthlink deal, they are also scrambling around to find any available chunk of land to offer up the 49ers. Which will require major city investment.
But there is growing momentum in San Francisco for a city-owned network, possibly of just the type you describe.
Sasha is right – the San Francisco Bay Guardian a respected 40 year old alternative weekly owned locally has been critical of the sports giveaways – and has always to it’s core supported publically owned utilities.
Also why is this incorect posting on MuniWireless unsigned – who posted it?
Kimo,
I am not criticizing the SFBG for not mentioning sports subsidies, I am just saying that they did not mention it and it deserves to be mentioned. In fact I agree with SFBG that, in municipalities’ decisions about funding or not funding public broadband, they do not see that much of the stuff they do fund out of taxpayer money is far less useful — like sports.
Please note that I do not live in San Francisco. I live in Amsterdam so the San Francisco Bay Guardian is not on my daily newspaper reading list and I do not follow their pronouncements on the public funding of sports teams and stadia.
As for who posted this “incorrect” article (which I am now saying is not incorrect, you read it incorrectly), it’s me – good old Esme Vos – the founder of Muniwireless.com. As the founder of this blog, I do not need to tell people in every article that it is I who posted it. This is my blog and I am going to do as I damn well please.
[...] In the meantime, though, there have been a couple of articles that have surfaced about the project. Esme Vos, at the definitive site Muniwireless.com, riffing on the Guardian’s editorial, points out that cities are unwilling to shell out a dime for wi-fi, but are eager to give away huge amounts of money and land for sports teams, If your mayor and city council say they cannot spend taxpayer money on public broadband, ask them how much of your tax money they kindly ‚Äúdonated‚Äù to the local football, baseball, basketball and ice hockey teams. Ask them also how much time they spend in those luxury sky boxes. She’s right, of course, and Newsom’s unseemly desperation (”how ’bout Candlestick? No? Then what about the Shipyard? Maybe the Presidio? The Mission?”) with he ‘49ers is a prime example. [...]
You have to be kidding. If government takes your idea and forms service as you have suggested will not create more competition but will compete with subsidies and the potential for escalating costs is beyond imagine. The supplu and demand theory is only as good as the market allows. Anotherwards it will only support it self as the potential users demand. If a government entity gets involved they will only increase costs and will have no competition.
As for sport stadiums and the public subsidizing them they do generate income, cash flow in the community and create jobs. I don’t specically agree with any public monies supporting private businesses but your article sparked a nerve with me.
Thanks you.
Gary,
The government is NOT going to be delivering the service. Internet access is going to be delivered by private companies like EarthLink, Verizon, AT&T, etc. The government is not even going to be building the network or maintaining it. The government does not build roads – it gets a construction company to build roads. The toll roads are even managed by a private company.
This is the model I am talking about here. The government spends public monies (like it does on roads and sewers) on fiber and wireless infrastructure – the transport layer. A private company builds it, maintains it and leases it out to service providers. If you have a transport layer that is not owned by an AT&T or a Verizon, you can have more service providers on that layer competing with each other to deliver service to you. Result: competition — lower prices, more bandwidth, better service.
I believe in competition and this is the only way to guarantee it.
Gary, it’s important to realize that on the question of broadband access in San Francisco, private enterprise has totally failed many people. There are whole areas of the city where there is no way to get DSL or cable broadband. Those areas are, in general, low-income and non-white.
If it takes government ownership of the network (at whatever level) to make sure that everyone in San Francisco has access to broadband internet connections, many of us are all for it.
As far as public funding of stadiums, it’s almost always a loss, in terms of economic benefits. See, for example, Field of Schemes.