Don't wait for incumbent ISPs to build networks in uncompetitive areas, build your own networks. That was the message from FCC staffer Gigi Sohn at the NATOA Annual Conference in San Diego this week, ironically just days before Google announced that San Diego will likely be an upcoming Google Fiber launch market. According to Sohn cities tired about lackluster, uncompetitive service now have the power to do something about it.
"Rather than wait for incumbent ISPs to build the network your cities want and need, you can take control of your own broadband futures," Sohn told attendees.
"Rather than thinking of yourselves as taxers and regulators, which has been the traditional role, you can think of yourselves as facilitators of the kind of services you’ve been begging the incumbents to provide for years," she said.
Google Fiber, a surge in municipal deployments, and increased adoption of public/private partnerships have mainstreamed the conversation about eliminating the mono/duopoly logjam. Now, municipal broadband is on everyone's lips; a far cry from the days where this author rambled on about what at the time was a very niche subject -- one completely ignored by the mainstream media.
Sohn was quick to highlight successes in places like Sandy, Oregon, and the surge in public/private partnerships like the one between Ting and Westminster, Maryland. Sohn also highlighted the important fact that after fifteen years of apathy, the FCC is finally taking aim at protectionist state laws written by incumbent ISP lawyers, which prohibit towns and cities from wiring themselves -- even in cases where nobody else wants to.
As for ISPs that despise the idea of government getting into the broadband business, the solution is simple: provide better service. If customers weren't desperately dissatisfied with the price and customer service of the broadband they currently have, municipal broadband wouldn't even exist.