GENTLE, GIANTS

With the consolidation of the telecom industry's largest carriers looming, telecom consumers of every stripe are already worrying about the effect of these mergers — and the mammoths they create — on pricing and customer choice. One way these giants could help allay the mounting fear of oligopoly is to loosen their grip on customer choice by ceasing opposition to municipal broadband. Now more than ever, towns with insufficient telecom service will be unwilling to wait for mega-corporations to wade through long integration processes to deliver broadband, and they'll be even more wary of high prices and poor service resulting from less competition. In small towns where private broadband deployment isn't lucrative, carriers should either fish or cut bait. In more contested markets, carriers should consider to what extent their anti-muni broadband efforts engender even greater mistrust of telecom providers. In a recent news story in Lafayette, La., where taxpayers will vote on a municipal fiber-to-the-home project, a citizen with no opinion on the fiber project expressed resentment of a privately funded “push poll,” which suggested that a government-run television service might be rationed out only three days per week. Consolidated supercarriers may find it even harder to rally the public behind them, but they will fuel even greater demand for muni broadband (and cable telephony) unless they use their vaunted might to offer the kind of competitive service that will keep customers happy.