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Internet and Municipal Broadband Liberate Small Towns

High speed Internet access is becoming a public necessity, like water, gas, and electricity. Large and small communities are beginning to realize that they have to provide their residents with this service, either in partnership with the private sector or as a public utility. The concept is taking hold in communities from California to Michigan to Vermont. ... Increased public access is another fine benefit. By using the local networks, towns can offer their residents any number of services, including public safety, political forums, church services, and Internet radio stations. ... Many in both the public and private sectors see broadband access as an essential tool for economic growth, health care, and education for all ages. Proponents of affordable wireless broadband say access helps to keep jobs and attract new businesses. It also is an indispensable tool for telecommuting and advances in telemedicine. isen.blog

Ah, great minds think alike - pundit David Isenberg in his Isen.blog cites his hometown newspaper with this article, introducing the article with this statement: Eureka! I opened the November 8 issue to find this Editorial, by Managing Editor Janice Walford. Clearly Municipal Wireless has reached a tipping point. Keep in mind, this newspaper is not exactly the New York Times - it serves the "metropolitan" areas of Falmouth, Mashpee, Sandwich, and Bourne, all small towns in Massachusetts. Seriously folks, this is small town America and we're seeing more and more interest at this level - these are towns that can truly benefit from the Internet, as soon as they get going with a municipal broadband project.

So if we are really at a Tipping Point, as many insiders suspect, and as David Isenberg suggests, (and as I proposed in the Vision Statement on the Home Page of this website), it would be what we are all looking for: the point where deployments start to rapidly increase and the interest in municipal broadband explodes, where deployments are under serious consideration by more and more municipal leaders, in big cities and small towns alike.

There's no doubt the Internet is spreading in its influence, and such influence will transform the prospects for small town municpal broadband the more it grows. As the Internet provides small town residents much of the benefits of big-city life, but without the traffic and crime that goes with big cities, it will be embraced. Small towns have better values in real estate, for one, and we like small towns as places to raise our children in. In this New York Times article, Small-Town Shops Bulk Up on the Web, we see that small town businesses are combining Internet commerce with their brick & mortar retail shops to reach more people, both in their towns and beyond, out in the global marketplace. And the improved business is reflecting well on all the residents of the towns - when downtown businesses thrive, downtowns thrive as well. This makes the case well that Internet business expansion in small towns will be an econmomic boon.

Compare this news with the news we heard not so long ago about what would happen to small busineses and small town downtowns when WalMart came to town. It's a long and winding road, apparently. The world has room for the big discounter AND the niche businesses that provide special goods and services, it turns out. And the world has room for both retail brick & mortar, and e-commerce. These things go together well. The world has room for both incumbents and new market entrants in muncipal broadband, and the world has room for many technologies working together in the integrated systems of tomorrow. WiMAX goes with Wi Fi mesh goes with fiber goes with BPL goes with cable. The world is more complex than we give it credit for - we are prone to simplifying things into dualities, either or decisions, in order to make the world more simple. But its not. It remains complex, but that's what makes it interesting now, isn't it?

Posted on November 20, 2005 at 08:16 PM

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