San Francisco's Muni-Broadband Network to Demand Net Neutrality The city of San Francisco is not only building the biggest community broadband network in the nation, but it's promising that the new network will adhere to net neutrality. Driven by consumer annoyance at high prices and limited competition, the city has been exploring the option for a while, a recent consultant's report (pdf) indicating that the city could build an open access (where multiple ISPs come in to compete) citywide fiber network for around $1.9 billion. The city's plan so far is to forge public/private partnerships with interested parties to help build and fund the network.

The network is still in the planning stages, but the city last week began looking for potential network partners The city will then narrow down the top bids to just three potential teams. And it has mandated that any successful bid (or any ISP that utilizes the network) must adhere to net neutrality in the wake of the FCC's rushed repeal of federal rules at incumbent ISP behest. “The opportunity The City is about to present to the private sector is unprecedented,” reads the 195-page consultant's report by Maryland-based consultant Columbia Telecommunications Corporation. "There has never before existed in any American community an opportunity for a private entity to lease fiber or broadband infrastructure to reach 100 percent of the homes and businesses in the community," it adds. Harvard Law Professor Susan Crawford over at Wired notes that San Franciso hopes to use the open access model where the city works to build the network, then numerous ISPs and other companies come in later to compete over the top. The FCC's own data (data promptly ignored by the agency over the years) has shown that this approach often results in faster, cheaper service. "What’s great about this suggestion is that it removes any political argument that the city is somehow undermining the private market for internet access services," Crawford argues. "At the same time, a dark fiber public-private partnership would dramatically lower the cost for the private market to do what it does best: directly serve customers in a competitive environment that, on its own, produces low costs and innovation." As is often the case, these cities wouldn't be exploring this route if they were happy with existing broadband service. Instead of offering a cheaper, better product, large ISPs like Comcast and AT&T have worked tirelessly to quite literally As is often the case, these cities wouldn't be exploring this route if they were happy with existing broadband service. Instead of offering a cheaper, better product, large ISPs like Comcast and AT&T have worked tirelessly to quite literally write and buy protectionist state law preventing locals from being able to decide on these local infrastructure issues by themselves.







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Most recommended from 28 comments

mc510

join:2005-06-20

El Cerrito, CA 7 recommendations mc510 Member I give it two years to fade away I'm too lazy/busy to read the 193 page report, but the fact that Susan Crawford is hyping this plan is reason enough to take it with a mountain of salt. The idea of having a separate corporation (whether public, private, or public/private) that owns fiber infrastructure and leases it on a non-preferential basis to ISPs is perfectly sound; it's existing practice in quite a few countries. What's not been sufficiently explained in any of the press coverage is who is going to PAY for the construction of the fiber infrastructure. I would posit that no private investor is going to do so, simply because of the massive inefficiency, political meddling, and social mission-ing that comes with trying to do business in the City and County of San Francisco. Will SF come up with the capital investment itself? Or enough capital investment to overcome the reasonable skittishness of private investors? All at the same time that Comcast moves to DOCSIS 3.1, Sonic expands its existing fiber footprint, AT&T continues its own rapid Bay Area fiber rollout? I'll predict two years of hype, then we never hear of this plan again.

DocDrew

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join:2009-01-28

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1 edit 5 recommendations DocDrew Premium Member San Francisco is building the biggest community broadband network??? What part of the network has been built Karl? This hasn't gotten past the paper stage and doesn't have any funding. The title of this article should be "With San Francisco Muni Still Uncooked, the City Begins Hyping 'Net Neutrality and Open Access'" or "SF Muni Now Hits 0 Subscribers" or "San Francisco plans to Nab $1,000s From Residents Who Won't Even Be Customers"

SysOp

join:2001-04-18

Atlanta, GA 1 edit 4 recommendations SysOp Member 1.9 billion? So their cost of living is not going down, nor is the cost of their ISP. Genius.



May as well Annex their existing fiber infrastructure and go from there.



And we know it's going to cost triple their projections. These muni-ISP are never under or on budget. Stick to private funding.