Minister calls for computerising municipal operations

Grok Headline matches for Minister calls for computerising municipal operations

Verizon CEO Calls Municipal Wi-Fi 'a
Dumb Idea'

Verizon CEO Calls Municipal Wi-Fi 'a
Dumb Idea' 04/16/2005 08:41 PM

Microsoft delegation calls on Commerce
Minister

Microsoft delegation calls on Commerce
Minister 02/18/2004 08:17 PM
PakTribune.com Feb 19 2004 0:42AM GMT

Canada Prime Minister Calls June
Elections (AP)

Canada Prime Minister Calls June
Elections (AP) 05/24/2004 06:19 AM
AP - Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin, who took office when his predecessor retired, called general elections for June 28 in a bid to win his own mandate. But he could face a tough test with support for his Liberal Party hit by a patronage scandal.

Computerising the NHS

Computerising the NHS 03/30/2005 08:56 PM
Guardian Unlimited Mar 31 2005 12:27AM GMT

Operations newsflashes: Advest Names
Wellington Head of Operations and
Technology, and more

Operations newsflashes: Advest Names
Wellington Head of Operations and
Technology, and more 04/14/2005 01:39 AM
Wall Street and Technology Apr 14 2005 5:48AM GMT

Computerising the body: Microsoft wins
patent to exploit network potential of
skin

Computerising the body: Microsoft wins
patent to exploit network potential of
skin 07/05/2004 07:08 PM
Guardian Unlimited Jul 5 2004 11:16PM GMT

[f2c] Municipal wifi

[f2c] Municipal wifi 03/31/2005 02:36 PM
(After a morning with no women speakers or questioners, we now have a panel with a woman on it. Yay.) J.H. Snider moderates. [Sketchy coverage follows...] Varinia Robinson is in charge of Philadelphia's municipal wifi project. You have to get your muni wifi in by Jan. 1, 2006, or else you have go to your local provider. This was done to protect "competition." The city thinks it'll cost $10.5M to build it and $1.5M annually to maintain it. It will cover 45 square miles and provide a mnimum of 1mb up and down. It's an ubiquitous indoor network. To break...

How to Pay for Municipal Networks

How to Pay for Municipal Networks 09/21/2004 02:46 PM
Some municipalities may have already learned some lessons about offering telecom services that they can consider when deciding to build Wi-Fi networks: Some of the most successful municipal offerings of wired telecom services started out with small trial networks and were offered by municipalities that already offer utility services to customers. But beyond whether a municipality has experience with billing and marketing a service, Wi-Fi presents a bunch of additional uncertainties. In the wired example, in many cases the market doesn't have any other option for broadband Internet access and customers definitely pay for the access. In the case of Wi-Fi, in many cases other service providers may already offer wireless access. Plus, cities have to decide whether they want to offer access for free or for a fee. If they want to deliver free networks, they have to decide how to fund it, considering both the initial outlay and ongoing support costs. Ultimately, citizens of communities may end up deciding. In St. Cloud, Fla., the city is trying to decide how to pay for the ongoing maintenance of the network and will likely ask residents to decide on a ballot referendum. If municipalities decide to ask residents to pay for access, they have to hope they can cover their costs. At this stage in the market, based on the experiences of commercial Wi-Fi providers, it's not clear that an operator can make money from for-fee networks....

Let's Ban Municipal Networks Nationwide

Let's Ban Municipal Networks Nationwide 06/05/2005 10:56 PM
Anti-Federalism rears its ugly head with Rep. Sessions's bill: The bill would ban municipal networks where any competitive service existed in the municipal area of governance. A grandfather clause allows existing services to proceed. The language of the "Preserving Innovation in Telecom Act of 2005" is so hilariously broad and ill-defined that it could kill all kinds of projects that the incumbent carriers this is meant to protect would support or are involved in deploying. It has such a broad grandfather clause that it could allow massive projects to continue if even a tiny portion of the service was in use. I doubt it will go anywhere because in its current form, it's a shotgun full of buckshot, not a surgical weapon. A broad consortium of businesses and public policy groups will certainly try to get it killed. I doubt it will get many supporters because of its broad sweep. For instance, this bill would kill all future airport Wi-Fi that's not already built out because government entities would be unable to "provide" services if Wi-Fi were operating anywhere else in the airport authority's municipality's domain. It's pretty easy to read that interpretation....

World warms to municipal Wi-Fi

World warms to municipal Wi-Fi 06/25/2004 04:11 AM
From Taipei to New York, it's wireless a-go-go

The Ups And Downs Of Municipal Broadband

The Ups And Downs Of Municipal Broadband 04/14/2004 11:51 AM
Following last month's Supreme Court ruling stating that state s could outlaw municipal broadband, ZDNet has an interesting interview with Jim Ballmer, one of the lawyers fighting to let municipalities offer broadband, should they want to. Meanwhile, the very large UTOPIA municipal broadband (offering fiber to the home) project in Utah was dealt a huge setback last night when Salt Lake City decided not to support the project, after a fairly intense fight over the issue. Qwest is rejoicing, as they've been complaining about UTOPIA ever since it was first conceived. However, the folks behind UTOPIA are clearing trying to push ahead, and hope that they'll be signing up a few other cities to help out soon. The big questions now are whether or not the other cities involved are willing to foot the larger part of the bill and whether or not they'll be able to find enough subscribers to make AT&T still be interested in being a service provider on the network. Once again, we return to the example of Burlington, Vermont, where a municipal fiber connection with ownership by its own users means much more opportunity for everyone except companies who previously had the local monopoly on providing (much slower) broadband access. A municipal solution that allows companies to sign on as providers builds on the idea of a natural monopoly while still allowing true competitive market pressures to provide people with better services.

Los Angeles Looks to Build Municipal
Wi-Fi

Los Angeles Looks to Build Municipal
Wi-Fi 06/24/2004 09:36 AM
The Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Project is looking for proposals to build a free Wi-Fi zone in downtown: MuniWireless.com has the RFP (request for proposal)....

Ohio Tries to Suppress Municipal-Fi

Ohio Tries to Suppress Municipal-Fi 12/19/2004 03:18 PM
Esme Vos dissects the latest state bill that caters to incumbent operators: Existing law prevents municipalities--with their tremendous tax-free advantages as opposed to the massive subsidization of telcos and cable operators--from running their own cable TV systems. A modified bill, introduced by a graduate of the colleges of Zig Zigler and Dale Carnegie, adds telecom services to that mix. Esme would like to know which companies are behind this particular emendation to Ohio's law. [link indirectly via GigaOm]...

Municipal Broadband at SXSW

Municipal Broadband at SXSW 02/07/2005 01:07 AM
Events move so fast, my head spins: a few days after covering the flurry of activity around the New Millennium Research Council's report discouraging municipal broadband, I was asked to moderate a panel on the discussion on March 14 during the South by Southwest (SXSW) music, arts, and interactive festival and conference in Austin, Texas. Esme Vos is also on the panel, from MuniWireless.com, and we should have a rip, and might I add, roaring time. The interactive part of the event runs March 11 to 15; the overall event is from March 11 to 20....

New Twist on Municipal Hotspots

New Twist on Municipal Hotspots 06/28/2004 02:42 PM
Manchester, New Hampshire, plans to announce in mid-July that a hotspot will be available downtown for anyone to use free for one hour: It appears that the city decided it wanted a network and put out a request for proposal. Signull Technologies offered to fund and build the network and then offer one free hour per day per user. An hour a day might be useful for folks who may want to check email during their lunch break or for visitors to town. The agreement sounds like a good way for Signull to pull in potential customers and for the city to offer a useful service for visitors and residents....

NRMC Report on Municipal Broadband Is
Out

NRMC Report on Municipal Broadband Is
Out 02/05/2005 09:27 PM
I've read the report, and it's worth downloading and reviewing: The report from the NMRC is called "Not In The Public Interest - The Myth of Municipal Wi-Fi Networks -- Why Municial Schemes to Provide Wi-Fi Broadband Services With Public Funds Are Ill-Advised." I've studied it now and have some comments. Before reading my comments, you should review that report and one that's a predecessor and cited in this report and in some of the advance publicity from The Heartland Institute, which co-produced the report--The Beacon Hill Institute at Suffolk University's Municipal Broadband in Concord: An In-Depth Analysis. (See also Karl Bode's more irate analysis of the report.) I'm going to back in time to March 2004, when the Beacon Hill Institute report was published because many elements of it are embedded in the NMRC report. The Concord report from Beacon Hill analyzes whether a proposed network in Concord, Mass., has any hopes of producing a good return with low risk. The report looks at four cities, including Tacoma, Wash., and Ashland, Ore., and also examines RCN, a cable operator that tried to offer competitive broadband services in areas with incumbent operators. Some financial details in the report on Tacoma and Ashland date to 2001 partly because financial information isn't readily broken out for these two projects. Based on aspects of the Beacon Hill report, it was clearly primarily written in late 2003 when full-year figures for 2002 were all that would have been available. It's tricky to tease out where they got numbers for Ashland and Tacoma even after studying and following the footnotes and reading reports at the various project sites. For instance, a citation on Ashland borrowing as much as $20 million from other city agencies to make up revenue shortfalls in their fiber network is attribute to a site called Dynacorp-sucks.com that was "last accessed January 28, 2003" in the footnote reference. There is no record of this site at Archive.org, either, which doesn't mean it didn't exist, but means I cannot research what used to be there. On the Ashland Fiber Network site and City of Ashland's site, I cannot find recent numbers on cost and capital expenses, except that in the 2003-2004 budget, income from AFN outstrips expense by about 15 percent ($2.67 million in versus $2.33 million out). There appears to be no primary research in the Beacon Hill report, such as...

Is free municipal wifi good?

Is free municipal wifi good? 09/02/2004 08:06 AM
Philadelphia is considering investing $10M to blanket 135 square miles with wifi coverage. Some people for whom I have the highest respect, and from whom I've learned a lot, I anticipate are going to denounce this. Their argument is that the government is exactly the wrong entity to make decisions best made by the market. Why? Because: Government agencies are ill-equipped to make technical decisions. Governments are corrupt. The incumbents have too much influence. Even if Philadelphia makes the right decision, it will lock the city into one technology that will be hard to displace. There is no such thing...

Free municipal WiFi in Jerusalem

Free municipal WiFi in Jerusalem 09/05/2004 11:56 PM
Xeni Jardin: Following up on last week's post about the city of Philadelphia considering free wireless 'net access for all, BoingBoing reader cyphunk says, "Pfff. Jerusalem (Israel) is already rolling out free wifi for the ENTIRE city -- starting with major commercial areas." Link to news story.

Xpress Municipal & Utility Clearance

Xpress Municipal & Utility Clearance 11/03/2003 11:13 AM
11/03/03 - Server Ready

Disputing Municipal Network Failures

Disputing Municipal Network Failures 03/19/2005 02:24 AM

The folks at Tricitybroadband.com have a page that refutes failures: Many of the anti-municipal networking foes have released misinformation about what they describe as financially flawed or failed networks around the U.S. Unfortunately, although there are certainly municipal services that haven't worked out--there have to be some failures--the ones that are bandied about are typically misrepresented. Tricitybroadband.com has a regularly updated page that provides the official response and financial details refuting this misinformation.

The point here would be to work with facts: if the facts that the utilities, cities, or Tricitybroadband is presenting are incorrect, then other facts could refute them. We could have, say, a real debate going in which real information was presented, examined, and conclusions reached.

Gurley and Ellison on Municipal Rights

Gurley and Ellison on Municipal Rights 03/19/2005 02:24 AM

Bill Gurley of Benchmark Capital offers a fantastic, capitalist, classically conservative essay on municipal telecom/broadband: Benchmark is an investor in Tropos, disclosed in Gurley's essay, but his essay is one that should make those that favor self-determination in government and true competition cheer. He peels back in six points the problems with the rash of laws sparked by a March 2004 Supreme Court ruling to restrict municipal involvement in telecommunications infrastructure and service.

In brief, these laws: favor incumbents by eliminating competition, enforce the idea that oligopolies are competition, restricts American innovation, restricts leverage for municipalities over incumbent development, eliminates community service aspects of broadband, and removes self-determination. I call this classically conservative because he's in favor of competition, although many conservatives would exclude municipalities from being involved as competitors.

"In what is ostensibly the cornerstone "democracy" on the planet, one would think that the citizens in each of America's cities could simply "vote" on the services they believe make sense for their city to provide."

Carol Ellison writes about the tale of two companies interested in the muni space: Ellison runs through the issues facing Tropos, a Wi-Fi metropolitan mesh provider, and DynamicCity, which offers fiber to the premises (FTTP). "The anti-muni bills present a scenario where their companies aren't submitting bids to win the business. They're forced into negotiations with a competitor, the incumbent carrier, which understandably will want to protect the market and keep its competition out."

PA incumbents get to veto municipal wifi

PA incumbents get to veto municipal wifi 02/01/2005 09:09 PM
From an article by Wes Simonds at Wifi Planet: The terms of the bill essentially give Verizon and other local carriers the right to veto all citywide hotspot plans similar to Philadelphia's in the state of Pennsylvania beginning Jan. 1, 2006. As Jock Gill suggests, we could use some model legislation to preempt this type of anti-user, corporate welfare in other states. [Thanks to Dewayne Hendricks for the link.]...

Bill would thwart municipal Internet

Bill would thwart municipal Internet 02/01/2005 09:14 PM
Indystar.com - Tue Feb 1, 08:50 am GMT

Senators back municipal broadband

Senators back municipal broadband 06/24/2005 03:32 PM
In the face of opposition from the telecom industry, some US senators are supporting municipal broadband.

State of Municipal Wireless Report

State of Municipal Wireless Report 03/14/2005 05:47 PM
Esme Vos at Muniwireless.com has published her regular comprehensive report: This free report is invaluable because it contains the detail that's often hard to pull together about deployed municipal wireless networks. It should be ammunition for any debate in which the question of whether there are successful networks out there is raised. This is also a good thing because most of the anti-municipal broadband folks, both the reasonable ones and the ones who are acting by proxy for incumbents, keep citing fiber-optic network costs and failures. (Even though most of those networks were or are successful, which is an entirely different topic of discussion.) The report also covers the state of legislation to prohibit or limit municipal broadband....

Municipal Wireless Goes Beyond Internet
Access

Municipal Wireless Goes Beyond Internet
Access 07/29/2004 05:22 PM
Wi-Fi Planet Jul 29 2004 8:18PM GMT

Does Municipal Broadband Save Jobs?

Does Municipal Broadband Save Jobs? 04/30/2004 01:33 PM
Just as certain states (at the urging of big broadband providers) are trying to ban municipal broadband offerings, Broadband Reports is looking at whether or not municipal broadband helps create jobs and boost the local economy. It seems like it's a mixed bag - but in a fairly expected way. Obviously, it has the ability to do two things: (1) give jobs to local residents working for the municipal broadband service provider and (2) help create new jobs for those who need broadband. However, it's unlikely (on its own) to suddenly turn any town or city into the next Silicon Valley. Still, with some towns unable to get broadband any other way, it can clearly help towns keep jobs that would otherwise go away. Considering the fact that, these days, many jobs require broadband access, it seems somewhat ridiculous for states to mandate that their towns and cities can't come up with their own solutions.

New Municipal Reports Debunk Network
Failures

New Municipal Reports Debunk Network
Failures 04/11/2005 01:03 PM
Remember how the anti-municipal sock puppets and ideologues keep citing the same failures? They're not failures. In fact, they're generally successes. You hear Tacoma, Wash.; Ashland, Ore.; Braintree, Mass.; Marietta, Georgia; and others bandied about as failures that have drained taxpayer inputs and failed to live up to their financial projects. As I discovered when starting down the research path on this two months ago, those networks are successes: the numbers that "prove" their failure are typically cherrypicked from early construction stages or even take numbers that were planning figures and weren't used during the approval stages by voters, city councils, or boards of directors. The people at Free Press have released a comprehensive report, "Telco Lies and the Truth about Municipal Broadband Networks," (PDF) that includes the first-hand research that the authors of the reports that declare these networks failures never did. The Beacon Hill Institute report last spring, for instance, cites a number of cases using newspaper article, defunct Web sites, and early projects and apparently never actually spoke to the network operators about details. (I take the report apart in a post a few weeks ago.) All academics will tell you that primary sources are how you do it. If you talk to a primary source and they have publicly available documentation to back up what they say, then you can confirm or reject the contentions of that primary source. You can bring in other primary sources who have opposing views and facts. But if you rely on second or third hand reports, you will invariably produce conclusions that are poorly founded. The Free Press counters the misinformation that's been provided in two ways: first, by showing the fruit of the poisoned tree, a several-year-old report that gets cited today as if the information is contemporary (and it was bad back then, too); and, second, by using primary sources to show how each of these networks is producing the kinds of financial results that should encourage this sort of local development. A second report, "Connecting People: The Truth about Municipal Broadband," (PDF) handles the arguments about whether municipal networks improperly take the role of private enterprise in a new and unique way and suck the revenue and development that comes from private infrastructure into a municipal maw. This report also tries to address misinformation about the way in which these networks operator, historical antecedents about municipal...

Three Municipal Wireless Networks
Foreshadow Future

Three Municipal Wireless Networks
Foreshadow Future 06/24/2004 06:11 PM
Bob Brewin dives into three cities that are deploying large-area Wi-Fi networks for public-safety-only and mixed-use purposes: Spokane has unwired 100 city blocks, Rio Rancho claims over a 100 square miles, and Cook County ultimately expects nearly 1,000 square miles of coverage for public safety in Chicago and surrounding areas. The movement shows that municipal Wi-Fi has moved from a curiosity explored without many concrete goals--let's bring more people into downtown and see what happens, for instance--into a critical part in managing emergency response for fire, police, and medical personnel. When major incidents hit, the critical question is how well these networks perform, especially compared to cellular, landline, and proprietary (and expensive) public-safety band equipment. Spokane and Rio Rancho will offer public access to the network, while Cook County is focusing purely on public safety. Cook County's routers can switch to cellular or satellite networks as needed....

Model Anti-Municipal Broadband Bill

Model Anti-Municipal Broadband Bill 12/22/2004 01:27 AM
Esme Vos has uncovered (and has available for download) the model bill for state legislatures to ban municipal broadband: The inestimable Vos has emerged as a firebrand for fighting back the rhetoric of incumbent teleopolies that have put out the meme that there are unfair tax breaks and unfair advantages that a municipal operation has over private enterprise. This ignores the subsidies provided--estimated at over $700 per person in Pennsylvania over the last 10 years of a failed Verizon development plan, non-refundable--and "taxes" that telcos and cable companies are often able to collect for their own coffers. Vos now posts the bill that someone--she'd like to know the individual--wrote to distribute to various legislatures under the guise of competition. Competition means not taking money from taxpayers, charging them by overpriced tariffs defended to the death, collecting and keeping funds intended for rural or impoverished citizens to have universal access, and fighting for the right to squeeze the pipes to prevent interesting competitive services from rising. Competition does mean building neutral infrastructure paid for by access fees that allow all comers to compete on a level playing field to let the market determine the best use of resources. It's strange how businesses that hate regulation in theory love how it supports their business models. Also strange how many folks who claim to want real markets only really want big businesses to be able to dictate to their markets what things cost. I looked at the innards of the Word doc that Esme posted, but the only secret information it contains is about her computer, not any previous computers. On Monday morning, she posted the list of board members of the American Legislative Exchange Council, the group behind the model legislation. Update: Sascha Meinrath calls astroturf on three organizations, including ALEC, that are behind anti-municipal telco/cable/telecom service bills, pointing out that their boards' members are mostly made up of folks that more likely have their own companies' interests at heart despite the mission statements....

Podcast: Municipal Broadband Panel
Discussion

Podcast: Municipal Broadband Panel
Discussion 03/17/2005 03:44 AM
Listen to an hour of discussion at South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) on municipal broadband: Deep in the heart of Texas, mere blocks from the State House where a bill is under consideration to ban all forms of municipal networking, I led a panel discussion at SXSWi with three people well poised to discuss the issues: Esme Vos of muniwireless.com, Rich MacKinnon of Austin Wireless, and David Isenberg of the SMART Letter. The conversation was fairly focused, and you'll hear the same themes over and over again: disruptive technology is threatening incumbents who are trying to prevent all forms of experimentation and innovation by municipalities because any success on these fronts could produce competitive private businesses. All three panelists agreed the innovation and competition were good, and all four of us at various times agreed that utilities should probably not have anything to do with broadband except in facilitating competition by removing barriers to access to poles and conduits, or by contracting private firms to build neutral networks onto which any provider can roam. The audio quality is mixed: you can hear the panelists quite well, but questioners and commenters from the audience--including well-known quantities like Jock Gill, Dewayne Hendricks, Cliff Skolnick, and Jon Lebovsky--are a little faint. You can download the audio in MP3 format either directly as MP3 [31 MB] or as a ZIP archive [24 MB]. An article in yesterday's Austin Business Journal--in which publication my picture will appear in about two weeks in an unrelated story--points out that even airport-based Wi-Fi and broadband could be threatened because the contract that the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport has with Wayport would be banned under the first form of the house bill....

Are Speakerphone Mobile Calls Less
Annoying Than Regular Calls?

Are Speakerphone Mobile Calls Less
Annoying Than Regular Calls? 04/21/2004 03:53 PM
Last week we noted a new study saying that people get annoyed with others talking on mobile phones because they only hear one half of the conversation. At the time, I wrote that this made sense as periods of silence followed by talking are a lot more jarring to the passive listener. However, this BBC report claims that the reason for the annoyance is that it shows that we're more curious about what the other party is saying. I'm not sure I buy that. It seems much more likely that it's the variability in noise, from silent to noisy rather than any form of curiosity. When the conversation is at a constant hum (even when loud), it's much easier to tune it out. Still, the findings do go against the opinion many people have expressed that things like "push-to-talk" where the phone usually acts as a speaker phone would be more annoying since we get to hear both sides of the conversation. In fact, the researchers behind the study are even suggesting that mobile phone makers may want to explore adding speaker phones to more phones to make them less annoying. Of course, the study only set up two conditions: a conversation on a mobile phone and a face-to-face conversation. They didn't test the speaker phone situation to see how annoying that was. It's possible that the annoyance factor comes from the inability to make use of body language to express concepts as well, leading to a different tone of voice.

Of Municipal Broadband, Astroturfing And
Figuring Out What The Real Story Is

Of Municipal Broadband, Astroturfing And
Figuring Out What The Real Story Is 02/05/2005 09:49 PM
It's been pretty fascinating to watch this story develop over the past few days. Of course, it's nothing new to find out that supposedly "objective" research was actually carried out to favor a specific interest, but congratulations should go out to Glenn Fleishman for focusing the attention on the real story here. The background is that an organization called the New Millennium Research Council came out with a report which seemed to suggest that all municipal broadband was pure evil (well, not exactly, but that's how the pre-release info made it sound). Glenn took it upon himself to pull back some of the curtain on the folks who were behind the report. eWeek then took that a step further, and suddenly the "story" was no longer about the evils of municipal broadband -- but the sketchy connections between powerful telco interests who have been fighting as hard as they can against any kind of competition and the group that wrote the study. Glenn later gave a thorough review of the actual report, where he notes it's not nearly as bad as it had appeared from the initial leaks, and that it does raise some valid points. However, the real story is the underhanded way in which this report was written, with money being funnelled from a group supported by the big telcos to what appears to be nothing more than a front organization to write up reports that favor its funders. Now, others are picking up on the astroturf attempt, rather than the study itself.

US senators offer bill to protect
municipal broadband

US senators offer bill to protect
municipal broadband 06/24/2005 06:54 PM

WASHINGTON - Two U.S. senators have jumped into a growing debate about whether cities should be allowed to create tax-funded broadband services, with the two introducing a bill that would prevent states from outlawing municipal broadband projects.

Fourteen U.S. states have passed laws limiting municipal broadband services, with large Internet providers lobbying against city-offered services.

The Community Broadband Act of 2005, introduced Thursday by Senators John McCain, an Arizona Republican, and Frank Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat, would prevent states from outlawing municipal broadband service while requiring cities to regulate their own broadband services the same as they regulate competitors. For example, a municipal broadband service would have to pay the same franchise fees as other providers.

Several cities, including Philadelphia, have explored offering municipal broadband, typically using Wi-Fi technology, in recent months. Late last year, Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell signed legislation preventing further municipal broadband projects, but along with the bill came an agreement between the city of Philadelphia and Verizon Communicatons Inc. over a city-run Wi-Fi network.

The Community Broadband Act is needed to meet President George Bush's goal of universally available broadband in the U.S. by 2007, McCain said in a speech Thursday. McCain noted that the U.S. ranks 16th among nations in broadband penetration.

"This is unacceptable for a country that should lead the world in technical innovation, economic development and international competitiveness," McCain said. "As a country, we cannot afford to cut off any successful strategy if we want to remain internationally competitive."

Private investment in the Internet should be protected and continued, he added. "However, when private industry does not answer the call because of market failures or other obstacles, it is appropriate and even commendable, for the people acting through their local governments to improve their lives by investing in their own future," McCain said. "In many rural towns, the local government?s high speed Internet offering may be its citizens only option to access the World Wide Web."

Verizon and SBC Communications Inc., which both offer DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) services, have opposed municipal broadband, as has Time Warner Cable, saying tax-funded services should not be allowed to compete against existing commercial services. A spokesman for Verizon said Friday the company had not reviewed the McCain/Lautenberg bill and had no comment on it. An SBC spokesman didn't immediately respond to a request for comments.

The two telecom giants, however, helped fund a study released in February that said municipal Wi-Fi networks could have "grave flaws."

The New Millennium Research Council study suggested municipal broadband services could dedicate tax dollars to rapidly outdated technology. The study also noted that municipal broadband networks could be expensive to maintain. "Municipal Wi-Fi networks present a number of serious problems that are being overlooked as cities rush into committing millions in taxpayer dollars to pay for network development and expansion," the study said.

The McCain/Lautenberg legislation stands in contrast to a bill introduced in May by Representative Pete Sessions, a Texas Republican and former SBC employee. The Sessions bill, the Preserving Innovation in Telecom Act of 2005, would outlaw municipal broadband services in areas where competing commercial services exist. The bill has been referred to a House subcommittee.

Sessions introduced the bill to ?discourage local governments from wasting taxpayer funds on building duplicative infrastructure while at the same time encouraging private-sector companies to offer continually innovating service in underserved areas by removing the specter of government competition" he said in a statement when the bill was introduced.

On Thursday, 40 groups representing local governments, the IT industry and consumers sent a letter to members of Congress asking lawmakers to support pro-municipal broadband legislation. Among the groups signing the letter were the League of California Cities, Public Knowledge, the Rural Broadband Coalition, Consumers Union and the Fiber to the Home Council.

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Municipal Software Welcomes the City of
Miami as New Client

Municipal Software Welcomes the City of
Miami as New Client 07/09/2004 05:10 PM
BC Technology Jul 9 2004 9:27PM GMT

Heavy-Hitters Join Pro-Municipal
Broadband Legislative Battle

Heavy-Hitters Join Pro-Municipal
Broadband Legislative Battle 06/24/2005 10:01 PM
Dell, Intel, Texas Instruments, and others want more broadband to sell more gear to consumers: They've increasingly gotten involved in the ongoing debate over whether incumbent monopolies and duopolies deserve right of first refusal for broadband deployment in their service areas over municipalities because of incumbents' investments, municipalities' tax-free and bond-raising abilities, and the role of government in competing with private enterprise. The Wall Street Journal walks through the issue, starting with a small town in Texas that's building broadband because SBC can't or won't. The Texas legislature was considering a telecom "reform" bill--a bill which removed many public service and oversight controls on telcos--that would also have banned municipalities from participating in broadband. The original bill was so broad it would have banned virtually all private-public partnerships that the FCC and the Bush Administration have stressed for extending broadband into the furthest reaches of the country. The backlash is now coming since Texas's bill hit defeat for a variety of reasons, partly including Dell's founder picking up the phone and calling legislators. You see, computer makers would enjoy selling more equipment and one way to do that is broadband. (Homes with broadband connections tend to buy newer equipment and more computers, among other reasons.) Pete Sessions (R-Texas) has introduced a bill at the national level to pre-empt local legislation (there's that anti-federalism again) governing municipal operation of broadband. Sessions is the representative from SBC: a former employee with huge stock and stock options held directly (not in trust) with a spouse who currently works there. His chief of staff told the Wall Street Journal that "the congressman's ties to SBC do not present a conflict of interest." Except in that he has millions of dollars at stake over SBC's continued performance in the market....

Hundreds of California Municipal E-Gov't
Sites Fall Short in Usability Tests

Hundreds of California Municipal E-Gov't
Sites Fall Short in Usability Tests 05/25/2004 06:53 AM
BeSpacific May 25 2004 10:50AM GMT

New group urges public/private sector
partnership to facilitate municipal
broadband

New group urges public/private sector
partnership to facilitate municipal
broadband 04/16/2005 05:07 AM
A group called the High Tech Broadband Coalition is encouraging public and private sector partnership to facilitate municipal broadband.

Ricochet Offers Broadband Portable
Internet to Municipal & Public Safety
Workers

Ricochet Offers Broadband Portable
Internet to Municipal & Public Safety
Workers 05/12/2004 05:28 AM
dBusinessNews.com May 12 2004 9:41AM GMT
Grok Description matches for Minister calls for computerising municipal operations
GrokA matches for Minister calls for computerising municipal operations

Minister calls for computerising municipal operations

The following phrases have been identified by the grok system as matching this entry: