Hannibal Travis, Assistant Professor of Law, has written a law review article entitled Wi-Fi Everywhere: Universal Broadband Access as Antitrust and Telecommunications Policy where he argues that Congress and state legislatures should encourage cities and counties to provide free and low-cost Wi-Fi broadband service. Hannibal Travis, Assistant Professor of Law, has written a law review article entitled Wi-Fi Everywhere: Universal Broadband Access as Antitrust and Telecommunications Policy where he argues that Congress and state legislatures should encourage cities and counties to provide free and low-cost Wi-Fi broadband service. The article looks at US federal and state legislation, the Telecom Act of 1996, anti-competitive factors in US broadband policy and the regulatory framework in other countries where there is competition in the market for broadband services.
Municipal networks can play an essential role in making broadband access universal and affordable. We must not put up barriers to this possibility of municipal involvement in broadband deployment. Community broadband networks have the potential to create jobs, spur economic development, and bring a 21st century utility to everyone.
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The primary thesis of this Article is that Congress and the states should encourage cities and counties to provide free and low-cost Wi-Fi broadband to their citizens. The American public has a compelling national interest in equalizing access to computers and the Internet across racial, economic, and geographical lines.
Municipal broadband projects, and particularly the provision by cities and counties of free or low-cost wireless broadband networks partially subsidized by tax revenues, hold great potential to bridge the digital divide.
Existing municipal broadband efforts in the United States, as well as state-subsidized broadband deployment in other nations, have already successfully brought broadband to previously underserved areas.
Part II describes the history of the broadband market in the United States, and the anticompetitive implications of the market’s natural monopoly and network industry characteristics. Part III contends that a trio of recent Supreme Court cases construing the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (the “1996 Act”) achieved a sweeping deregulation of the broadband industry.
This has empowered the owners of broadband infrastructure with natural monopoly characteristics, such as telephone and cable networks, to act with near impunity to impair their smaller rivals’ ability to compete. As a result, congressional action is necessary to reinvigorate competition and promote municipal participation in the broadband marketplace.
Finally, Part IV endorses aspects of a bill being considered in the U.S. Senate, the Advanced Telecommunications and Opportunity Reform Act of 2006, which would remedy the growing digital divide by preempting state laws that prevent municipalities from setting up Wi-Fi networks.
Such a reform of the 1996 Act will best promote the federal policy of ensuring universal broadband service at affordable prices by accelerating the municipal provision of broadband to underserved communities.
Permitting state regulation and management of municipal broadband will adequately protect the interests of the private broadband industry and the public in preserving the viability of commercial projects.
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Download the PDF from here.
Don’t be intimidated by the length of the article (104 pages). Footnotes eat up more than half of the pages. It’s part of the law student’s joyful law school experience (working on a law journal or for a professor) to double check the footnotes for accuracy.
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