The May 2008 issue of Broadband Properties offers an overview of municipally-owned fiber-to-the-home networks across the United States. The article discusses why public power utilities are heavily represented, open vs. closed, the geographical distribution, and most importantly, the many differences between the models used by all these different communities.

In fact, what we have found is that there is no “municipal model.” Municipalities and other public entities build FTTP systems for many reasons and in many situations. They face a variety of legal and competitive landscapes, employ different financing methods, operate their systems in diverse ways, deliver different sets of services to different types of customers, and bring a diversity of resources and competencies to the task. While there are certain recurrent themes, there is no single distinguishing feature. Local differences appear to far outweigh the simple fact of public ownership.

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 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.