Adina Levin notes that an omnibus telecom bill in Texas is "seeking, among other things, to ban municipalities from offering wireless services." She makes several good arguments about why this is foolish but I'll throw out a few of my own thoughts as well.
For big cities like Austin, banning publicly-funded wireless is bad public policy but probably won't result in a substantial loss of high-speed Internet access. This isn't the case for Texas rural communities.
In the mid-1990s, the Texas Legislature gave telecommunications providers (primarily SBC) a number of concessions and, in exchange, secured for their financial support for a program known as the Texas Telecommunications Infrastructure Fund (TIF) at the rate of 1.25% of receipts from taxable telecommunications services. TIF provides grants for telecommunications initiatives and distance learning projects in schools, libraries and hospitals throughout the state.
Part of the TIF funds were allocated to "community networking" grants designed to help communities that were historically hindered by the digital divide (i.e. inner-city neighborhoods and rural cities) obtain high-speed access to the Internet. I participated in an evaluation of the first round of grantees at the time when their grants were coming to a close.
Our evaluation team found a couple of interesting trends in the rural communities we looked at...
(continue reading below the fold)
Most of these towns had no high-speed access whatsoever prior to the grant program, but not for lack of trying. Many of these cities were given the cold shoulder by SBC and Time Warner for years. The TIF funds finally provided a sufficiently large financial incentive to get their attention - something alliances of local businesses and citizens hadn't been successful in doing on their own.
Why do small towns want high-speed Internet access so badly? It's not about prestige or the entertainment value of the Web. High-speed Internet access is an economic necessity. Without it, students in small towns are put at a relative disadvantage to their peers, job-starved rural communities struggle to attract new businesses, and existing businesses struggle to compete. High-speed access also opens new doors for distance learning programs and telecommuting.
A surprising number of the cities we looked at set up wireless networks as their primary infrastructure, despite the fact wireless had just began to catch on. As it turned out, wireless technologies are perfect for the wide-open spaces of the Texas plains. Placing a industrial-strength transmitter on top of the town water tower was sufficient to give several towns virtually universal access to the Internet via WiFi. It's also a lot cheaper than laying miles and miles of cables.
Unfortunately, the people we spoke with in these small Texas communities were extremely nervous about how they would pay for their T1 lines and technical support once their grant period ended. Unlike their big city counterparts, these small communities don't have large corporations or nonprofits or wealthy foundations to underwrite and sustain long-term technology initiatives. A few cities told us point blank that they weren't sure their community networks would continue once the grant funds were gone.
In sum, Internet access is desperately needed in rural towns and wireless technology works great in many Texas communities. However, the combination of a market failure and the inability of local businesses and/or nonprofits to fund technology initiatives is leaving these communities behind.
Our legislators should be doing everything they can to bring our small towns up to speed with the rest of the state. As I recall, Texas cities are already forbidden from acting as broadband ISPs but the current statute doesn't address their ability to provide public Internet access via wireless networks. The truth is, allowing small municipalities to act as wireless Internet service providers may be the only way to secure sustainable, high-speed access to the Internet in many small communities at this point in time. Publicly-funded initiatives are more likely to prime the market for commercial enterprises than stifle competition. Cutting off this option for our small towns would be egregious mistake.
Texas Legislators enjoy free WiFi in our state capitol. Let's hope the recognize that rural Texas communities could profoundly benefit from a convenience they take for granted.
Posted by sarah at February 14, 2005 11:47 AM