I wonder if this is what we’ll get from local telco monopoly SBC if they win the Madison WiFi RFP:

If everything goes as planned, the telephone industry will be all about television in 2005. TV over your home phone line. TV on your cell phone. Few topics have been as popular this past year among phone companies and their technology partners.

I don’t think shoving conventional TV down SBC customer’s throats via DSL (will it ever be as fast as Japan or Korea’s service?) makes any sense…. As I said, an answer in search of a question. Clueless.

Esme Vos:

To make it easier for state legislatures to pass anti-municipal broadband laws, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has a piece of anti-municipal broadband model legislation entitled the “Municipal Telecommunications Private Industry Safeguards Act”. You can view the document here (Word format).

Falling further behind in true broadband services (2-way high speed internet), Ohio is evidently giving it up to the incumbent telco’s (SBC and others) via a bill to prevent municipal high speed networks.

John Borland reports that NTT/DoCoMo is testing wireless cell system downloads with speeds up to 1GBPS….. We’re far, far behind that.
Meanwhile, David Isenberg notes that we’re now 15th in per capita broadband penetration.

Atlanta is rolling out wifi across municipal facilities, according to Glenn Fleishman:

A big chunk of City Hall unwires this month, and chunks of the Atlanta airport by March 2005. A private firm has contracted with Atlanta to add Wi-Fi to city buildings, but will also continue its own rollout at private locations like hotels and retail stores. This is an interesting partnership, because the city?s stamp on the Wi-Fi carrier, Biltmore Communications, and the branding of the service as Atlanta FastPass should make it a much easier sell for private parties to want to climb on this particular bandwagon.

Meanwhile, Megan Costello has more on Madison’s WiFi plans.

Something for local officials to consider as they attempt to deploy pervasive wireless internet (2 way) across Dane County. Scott Bradner sees Pennsylvania Democrat Governor Ed Rendell’s signature of a law that requires cities to ask permission from telco’s before deploying their own networks as an ugly indicator of things to come. Via David Isenberg.

This makes sense. True, 2 way broadband should be a public good, like roads and local utilities. Danish IT executive Finn Helmer has urged his government to bring fiber to every home. David Isenberg has more.

David Isenberg references a broadband report that tells us that Japan, with half the population has about 10 times as many fiber to the home installations as the US.
At the same time, naturally, entrenched telcos are successfully lobbying to kill local givernment’s ability to deploy municipal broadband services. This is bad news all around. SBC certainly has not been rushing to bring Wisconsin broadband services up to 21st century standards. Nope, we’re stuck in the 1990’s here. Jonathan Kim takes a look at the telco lobbying… Xeni has many links on Philadelphia’s plans to offer free or low cost wifi access and the deal that Verizon cut with Ed Rendell, Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor to give them the right to veto any other municipal broadband plans.