Community advocate: Muni-broadband networks top 100

More than 100 communities around the U.S. have built their own municipal fiber-based broadband networks, according to community advocacy group the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR), which issued a report on the trend last week.

The increasing number of muni-broadband networks may further prove the resurgence of a trend that emerged during the middle of the last decade, but then seemed to suffocate under poor planning, unrealistic expectations, the exit from the business of municipal Wi-Fi player EarthLink and, most notably, the objections and legal hassles from existing public service providers—often major telcos.

The ILSR has released a Community Broadband Map that shows the locations of fiber-to-the-home and hybrid-fiber coax networks developed by municipalities or public utilities. Eventually, it also will include municipal wireless network and fiber-to-the-business network coverage. The map is part of the institute’s report, “Publicly Owned Broadband Networks: Averting the Looming Broadband Monopoly.”

The ILSR report calls on the Federal Communications Commission to intervene in a situation in which they say state legislatures heavily lobbied by incumbent service providers are in a position to block individual municipalities from pursuing their own projects. Ongoing muni-broadband disputes in places like North Carolina would seem to back up the ILSR’s concerns. The report argues that community networks may represent the only form of broadband competition some of these communities may see.