This article summarizes the "Public Ownership is Good Business" Panel from the 2008 Broadband Properties Summit. Panelists included Christopher Mitchell from muninetworks.org, Andrew Cohill of Design Nine, Monticello City Administrator Jeff O'Neill, Mary Farley of Steeplechase Networks, and John St. Julien from Lafayette.
The panel discusses the ins and outs of open access, goals driving community networks, and the power of next-generation networks.
This is not a new idea. The concept of common carriage is ancient in culture. It is deeply embedded in common law. It goes back almost two thousand years. Net neutrality is simply common carriage for the 21st century. It is the same idea we had in the 18th- century turnpikes. We fought it over canals. We fought it over railroads and we fought it over public roads when public roads were first beginning. To me, that's fundamental and it's a fundamental reason why the towns in Vermont wanted to do and do it as a public activity.
This is the report developed by a Broadband Advisory Committee established in 2006 in Saint Paul, Minnesota. It recommended a phased approach to building a network that could ultimately offer a full FTTH open-access network to everyone in Saint Paul.
The BAC recommends an incremental, phased-approach to creating a publicly controlled network that uses both short- and long-term solutions. This approach would allow City and community leaders to evaluate and make decisions at key points throughout the process.
The network would begin by creating a partnership with key Saint Paul public institutions to address their own broadband infrastructure needs. This partnership would participate in the development of a collaborative and cooperatively managed fiber network that would serve the immediate- and the long-term telecommunications needs of the partners. The cooperative venture would be leaveraged through the efficient maximization of the partners' pooled resources. The network has been coined the Community Fiber Network (CFN). Possible initial partners include: City of Saint Paul, Ramsey County, Saint Paul Public Schools, and State of Minnesota.
The BAC envisions that the CFN would have the ability to grow organically, developing in stages as new partners are added, with the possible long term goal of the CFN providing the momentum to build a city-wide fiber system to serve the entire Saint Paul community.
This report is one of the best at explaining what open access is and why it is important.
At a high level, everyone understands what it means for a network to be open: (1) whatever else it might do, the network offers a pure “transmission” service, so that users can freely communicate with each other; (2) users can connect any devices they want, as long as they don’t harm the network; (3) the network connects to other networks; and (4) the network doesn’t discriminate among users or among the services, information, and applications users want to provide to each other. None of these points should be controversial. The concept of open networks is at least 40 years old in the US. The FCC’s seminal 1968 Carterphone decision held that a network operator may not forbid the use of devices on the network that benefit the user and do not harm the network itself. A decade later the FCC established its equipment registration program requiring interfaces to the telephone network to be standardized and fully disclosed.
Burlington Telecom, a city department in the largest city of Vermont, offers a world class fiber-to-the-home network offering cable television, fast broadband, and telephone services. This case study explains how they did it.
ILSR issued a report in 2011 that updates this case study: Learning from Burlington Telecom: Some Lessons for Community Networks
Geoff Daily and Christopher Mitchell discuss open networks and competition in the television and broadband network sector.
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