I somehow missed this excellent ITIF paper by Robert D. Atkinson and George Ou when it came out at this point last year, but George has just dusted it off, made a couple of updates, and re-posted it over at……

i-Provo failed because of legislative restrictions that were externally imposed by telecommunications competitors lobbying the state legislature. Veracity and M-Star, the two licensed privately owned service providers for i-Provo were dismal. Every time I dealt with either company for residential and commercial service, my customer experience was so poor that I chose not to sign up, in spite of being ideologically supportive i-Provo.

My politically non-feasible solution? – socialism.

Hey, it works great for the utilities that I'm provided by Provo City. Retake full control of the network. Provide every person, household, and business in the city with a free unlimited .provo email account. Provide full unlimited high speed internet access to Provo City government websites and city television channel to every household. This would enable everyone in the city internet access to interact with their utility bills, and city government. Establish a home page for each city neighborhood, directed and administered by neighborhood chairs. Send out automatic email notices for and real time broadcast neighborhood, planning commission, and city council meetings. Potentially, you could even enable web-cam based video question and answer from people participating from home. (This would be especially helpful to those who are disabled or home-bound.) Provide full and free archived streaming video of all city meetings. And finally, provide unlimited internet access to all Provo households at 128kbps speeds for free! For faster internet speeds, television, and telephone service, people would need to subscribe and pay a fee. Have the fee schedule sliding scale, so that peoples monthly service fees diminish as more people in the city subscribe. If all participated, then the fees would become quite low, as the cost for running the network became fully funded by full participation.

Chances of any of this happening of course, are zero. We would rather pay exorbitant fees to for profit corporations than participate in government run self funding services that even carry a whiff of socialism.

i-Provo failed because of legislative restrictions that were externally imposed by telecommunications competitors lobbying the state legislature. Veracity and M-Star, the two licensed privately owned service providers for i-Provo were dismal. Every time I dealt with either company for residential and commercial service, my customer experience was so poor that I chose not to sign up, in spite of being ideologically supportive i-Provo.

My politically non-feasible solution? – socialism.

Hey, it works great for the utilities that I'm provided by Provo City. Retake full control of the network. Provide every person, household, and business in the city with a free unlimited .provo email account. Provide full unlimited high speed internet access to Provo City government websites and city television channel to every household. This would enable everyone in the city internet access to interact with their utility bills, and city government. Establish a home page for each city neighborhood, directed and administered by neighborhood chairs. Send out automatic email notices for and real time broadcast neighborhood, planning commission, and city council meetings. Potentially, you could even enable web-cam based video question and answer from people participating from home. (This would be especially helpful to those who are disabled or home-bound.) Provide full and free archived streaming video of all city meetings. And finally, provide unlimited internet access to all Provo households at 128kbps speeds for free! For faster internet speeds, television, and telephone service, people would need to subscribe and pay a fee. Have the fee schedule sliding scale, so that peoples monthly service fees diminish as more people in the city subscribe. If all participated, then the fees would become quite low, as the cost for running the network became fully funded by full participation.

Chances of any of this happening of course, are zero. We would rather pay exorbitant fees to for profit corporations than participate in government run self funding services that even carry a whiff of socialism.

The problem with all of your naysayers is that you have zero ideas and zero proposals of your own. Just endless carping with no solution other than a vague and condescending “let the free market reign”. Well, we tried that. We even dumped hundreds of billions into incumbent telcos to catch up to Japan and South Korean. They still dominate us with broadband networks that are both faster and cheaper than what we have. If this is the best the “free market” can offer, I say to hell with it.

The problem with all of your naysayers is that you have zero ideas and zero proposals of your own. Just endless carping with no solution other than a vague and condescending “let the free market reign”. Well, we tried that. We even dumped hundreds of billions into incumbent telcos to catch up to Japan and South Korean. They still dominate us with broadband networks that are both faster and cheaper than what we have. If this is the best the “free market” can offer, I say to hell with it.

If the free flow of information is deemed to be an important social good, why not use the institution of a library as a template for the provision of broadband services?

What is free broadband but the up to date digital version of a library? (In fact several libraries in my area have started to offer free wifi) Why is that any different than the computers that I can check out and login to and use at the library?

Are you against public libraries too?