WI-FI in SF

Should Municipalities Get in the Wi-Fi Business?
Wireless wonder at a fraction of the cost

by Adam Werbach

In the coming weeks, the city of San Francisco will request proposals for a plan for a community broadband network -- a network that can provide the people of San Francisco a blisteringly fast connection to the Internet at a fraction of the cost of Comcast and SBC.
That's the good news: The technology is here, it's cheap and cities across the country are doing it already.

But here's the bad news: During the next year of planning, you're going to be bombarded with messages about how the incompetent, bloated city bureaucracy is going to chase businesses from our town and waste millions of dollars on a fool's quest. It's not surprising; the cable and phone companies have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into a wired infrastructure that the people of San Francisco can leapfrog for a fraction of the cost.

Today, high-speed Internet service in San Francisco costs too much. Each month, San Franciscans pay about $50 for a high-speed Internet connection from either SBC or Comcast. In some neighborhoods, like Bayview-Hunters Point, it's not even universally available at that outrageous price.

Mayor Gavin Newsom, recognizing that a fast connection to the Internet is critical for economic development and public safety, set a goal of getting every resident access to a high-speed Internet connection. Supervisor Tom Ammiano had already created an initiative to study the feasibility of a municipal broadband system. Last month, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission took up the cause by taking the lead on the project with the city's Department of Telecommunications and Information Services, paving the way for community broadband to be another utility, like water and sewer services. The pieces are in place.

Here's how it could work: San Francisco would use the streetlight poles that it already owns to send wireless Internet signals throughout the city. The signals are harmless and similar in frequency to your cordless phone. Using a wireless Internet card on your desktop or laptop computer, you would tie into the city network, perhaps by putting a small antenna on your window. You would either pay the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission or an Internet service provider a small fee for access to the network that would be many times faster than current cable-modem or DSL services.

How much would it cost? It depends on which model we use. The city of Philadelphia will cover a little less than three times the land mass of San Francisco and will be charging subscribers $16 to $20 a month for Internet services. We could decide to create enterprise zones -- Chinatown, Bayview- Hunters Point, the Mission -- where access is free. We could make wireless Internet access free at all libraries, schools and community centers. With a city network, all these choices are open.

Opponents say that the unfairly subsidized entry of cities into the broadband arena will ruin the high-functioning free market for broadband services in the United States. The truth is that the highly subsidized cable- and-telephone company duopoly lacks competition and is limiting our economic growth. According to Media Access Project, the United States ranks 13th among developed nations in access to broadband and pays more than 10 times as much per megabit of speed as the Japanese or Koreans. Municipal networks, or even the threat of them, provide the competition to keep prices low and the quality of service high.

Community broadband doesn't "crowd out" competitors anymore than the BART airport extension crowded out airport shuttles and taxicabs from SFO; even though BART opponents claimed that it would put both out of business. San Francisco can provide a base level of high-speed service to its citizens; the cable and telephone companies can focus on higher-priced commercial applications, or use the city's broadband infrastructure to help lower their costs.

The unfair competition is not coming from cities such as San Francisco, but from the incumbent companies who enjoy a wealth of federal and state tax incentives. The phone companies have had years of monopolistic protection to establish their market position; to claim that the entrance of cities will ruin the free market that exists is specious. There is no free market, so the companies would rather regulate than compete.

And that's exactly what they're doing. One of the reasons I'm pushing San Francisco to move as quickly as possible on this initiative is that the telephone-and-cable lobby has already succeeded in passing state laws that prohibit 14 states from creating their own municipal broadband networks. If we don't get San Francisco into this arena soon, we might lose the chance. Expanding the reach of the public sector in an era when privatizing and outsourcing are de rigueur is not something that we should expect will be easy. But the people of San Francisco deserve the world's fastest and most inexpensive Internet access. Over the next year, we'll be refining the plan and looking for your support.

Adam Werbach is a member of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission who is also launching Progressive Film Club (http://www.progressivefilmclub.com