Planning, financing, building, and operating a public broadband network is intense and complex. Success requires a smart blend of community consensus building, engineering, financing, construction management, marketing, and customer service. Understanding why you, as a community leader, would take your citizens down this community decision-making path is critical.
Leaders of successful public networks cite these reasons:
Affordability
Public entities often cite affordability as a driving force for broadband network deployment and Internet service delivery. Public entities have significant cost advantages over the private sector: long-term financing, no requirement for shareholder return on investment (ROI), and no outlandish management salaries. Affordability can be one of the key values of a public utility that can support other community goals of quality education, economic development, community building, and other considerations. In addition, public entities can offer more consistent and transparent pricing schedules so that customers have a clear understanding of the cost of the service.
Universal Service
When considering a broadband deployment, a public entity is likely to set a goal of high-quality broadband that extends equally to all residents and businesses. Community broadband planners often identify wide variations of service availability across their city or county, no matter which technology is in place—fiber, fiber-coax, copper telephone lines, or fixed wireless. Private-sector operators may determine that some community locations are financially unfeasible for new network investment or infrastructure upgrades, leaving customers behind and extremely frustrated. Public entities are likely to be more responsive to these customers’ concerns and complaints.
Lack of Competition
Many communities suffer from a lack of broadband competition. At best, there may be the two legacy incumbent providers—a cable operator and a telephone company. (Cable networks generally have much higher capacity.) In most communities, the cable company dominates the local marketplace. The telephone company’s DSL service generally provides attractive pricing, but at much slower internet speeds. Even where the incumbent telco upgrades its network to fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) or fiber-to-the-curb (FTTC), thus providing two wired options, the nature of the competitive marketplace is unlikely to significantly change.
When communities attract a third wired provider, especially when it is a FTTH network, the local marketplace drastically changes. Providers must compete to maintain the minimum market share necessary for profitability and sustainability. Incumbents generally boost speed and/or cut subscription fees to maintain market share, especially as the new network is being constructed.
Outdated Infrastructure
Historically, legacy cable TV companies use a fiber-coaxial cable network. While these networks can deliver a gigabit download speed, upload speeds are generally in the 40-50 Mbps range. New cable modem technology promises symmetrical speeds in the future, but many legacy cable companies have switched to FTTH technologies in new housing for capacity and cost reasons.
Legacy telephone companies use a fiber/twisted-pair copper network to bring fiber to DSL access nodes. While these companies may market speeds of up to 100 Mbps, speeds vary significantly across neighborhoods due to varying distances from the electronics nodes and the condition of the copper. Communities doing due diligence may find that DSL customers may receive speeds of less than 10 Mbps/1 Mbps. These network shortcomings are exposed in the incumbent company’s own online DSL ordering tools where prospective customers can enter their address and find expected DSL speeds.
Unsatisfactory Customer Service
Many business stories document Americans’ frustrations with large-ISP customer service. From the ordering experience to billing to troubleshooting and repair, these companies often fall far short of customer expectations. Community broadband surveys allow respondents share their stories of slow speeds, outages, and slow response. These surveys can generate page after page of customer tales of woe.
In smaller communities and due to repeated service calls, residents may be on a first-name basis with the repair techs who struggle to keep obsolete networks in working order.
Lack of Community Engagement
Large ISPs often fail to be active community partners. Community engagement is demonstrated through financial support and/or leadership time and talent. Economic development and digital equity initiatives are two areas in which ISPs should have an enlightened self-interest in community participation. Wide-ranging experience with community broadband initiatives shows that many community officials would have no knowledge of even whom to contact at their ISP to discuss their participation.
Own Your Internet 