The London Times criticizes the UK’s broadband strategy (or lack thereof) by citing to a small Dutch town, Nuenen, whose fiber to the home network is the envy of many communities in Europe. Nuenen’s model is unusual: a public-private cooperative owns and runs the FTTH network and the subscribers have voting rights. Last year, the network generated a profit of €1 million on revenues of €4 million. But, the Times asks (and indeed most of us are asking too), why isn’t there even a debate about the different models of public-private partnerships?
Harold Feld says in the US, there is absolutely no debate because “the Chicago School — which equates a deregulated market with a competitive market and sees no role for government in economic policy beyond enforcing contract — continues to set the agenda and our broadband policy debates remain relegated to debating tweaks around the edges. In Europe, they can actually talk intelligently about a wide variety of possible approaches. Whereas here, we cannot even get past the underlying question of whether government has a role at all — let alone recognize the possible diversity of public/private approaches. Abroad, the debate is “what should we have as a broadband policy.”
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