Americans increasingly see decently fast Internet as more like a functioning sewer line than a luxury.
And a number of cities are trying to get into the Internet provider business, but laws in 19 states hamper those efforts. President Obama
announced this week
During a speech in Cedar Falls, Iowa, the president presented a plan promoting high-speed Internet for the country's more remote cities and towns. The executive director of
Next Century Cities
"This is about people, and people in communities who need resources for businesses, for e-government, for participatory democracy, for health care, for transportation, for education," she says. "Everything we do is related to our access to technology."
Anyone who's waited for a page to load or a stalled movie to resume wants faster Internet. But the major Internet service providers don't face much competition in many places, so they're not that motivated to upgrade. Faced with that,
some towns
"They started their municipal electric utility over a century ago, long before we had computers and toasters and microwave ovens, on the faith that this electricity thing was going to be important to the local economy," says Mikel Kline, who works for a municipal broadband company in
Chanute, Kan.
Chanute's broadband network runs about 100 times faster than typical American Internet. Kline says it's given his remote Kansas town one of the fastest growing junior colleges in the country, and connected its hospital to distant specialists.
Kline, who's an engineer, says all of this was feasible because Chanute already ran its own electric utility.
"They already have line workers, they already have utility poles, the rights of way. The infrastructure is largely in place," he says.
But the cable industry has a warning for towns that don't have that ready-made infrastructure, says Brian Dietz of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association.
He says there have been "several examples where government-run networks have failed because they aren't able to compete effectively with private-run networks."
Dietz points to Provo, Utah, which
spent more than $39 million
They've also been pretty successful at convincing state legislators that taxpayer-funded municipal broadband is a bad idea. Nineteen states now prohibit or at least discourage public involvement in the broadband business.
"We've got the largest city-wide, robust, gigabit network in the country," says Ken Hays, who works with the gigabit network serving
Chattanooga, Tenn.
The city built it on its publicly owned electric utility, just like in Chanute. Chattanooga wants to
expand service to outlying areas
"Our electric utility actually
petitioned
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