MUNI MESS

Late last week, the city of Chicago was attempting to rush a plan through its city council that would allow the construction of a municipal Wi-Fi network, similar in nature to a project planned for Philadelphia. We use the term “rush” because the city was trying to act before the Illinois General Assembly passed a bill disallowing municipalities in the state from building these networks, unless major telecom service providers got the right of first refusal on the projects.

That bill is at least similar in appearance to one passed late last year in Pennsylvania once word got out that Philly was planning its own network. The legislatures in the states of Pennsylvania, Illinois and elsewhere are acting largely at the behest of the lobbying teams of telcos such as Verizon Communications, which feel they should be given first crack at these projects and also must feel to some extent that these municipal networks would constitute franchises that would compete directly with their own efforts to provide similar services.

However, some municipalities believe that telcos already have had their chance to offer city-wide Wi-Fi or comparable broadband services. They say they're tired of waiting, and want their citizens to have ubiquitous, inexpensive access to what they term a public service. City officials in Philadelphia also have insisted that they never intended to alienate Verizon — they say they always wanted their project to involve private sector companies. They also believe, in fact, that Verizon will bid on an RFP that the city has put together for the project. For its part, Verizon told Telephony that it does want to bid on the RFP, which had not been released at press time.

So what's the big deal? There shouldn't really be a big deal. Municipal Wi-Fi projects are extremely well-meaning, but also have the whiff of something that upwardly mobile, socialist-minded government administrators dreamed up while they were standing in line at Starbucks, looking at the people sitting around the big sofa surfing the 'Net on their laptops.

The municipal Wi-Fi issue is just one part of what is a bigger broadband conundrum. Municipalities are fighting the same battle on the fiber front, trying to build out municipal fiber networks to fill a broadband void they say has been left by telecom companies. The fact is that while broadband isn't always cheap, it is available (even, in an increasing number of cities, from the cell phone company).

Wi-Fi is a cheap and easy technology to use. Municipal Wi-Fi coverage is a great idea — if envisioned as just another layer of broadband connectivity run by just another local ISP. Organized municipal Wi-Fi projects are even great ideas. They may spur service providers to think about the future in a different way, but that's about as much as municipal governments should have to do with these projects. After the inspiration is there, the project should be turned over to companies that know what it takes to build and manage networks.