[Cialug] Iowa Municipal Telecom Legisation

[D. Joe Anderson]

On Tue, Feb 22, 2005 at 10:35:10AM -0600, David Champion wrote:
> Anyone familiar with this:
> 
> http://www.freepress.net/communityinternet/=IAbill
> 
> There are several people here in the ISP business... how do you feel 
> about this?
> 
> IMHO this bill over regulates Muni telecom projects, and puts cities at 
> a big disadvantage compared to the private sector. If a city really 
> wants to do one, they should be allowed to do it.

So, is the House Study File 109 discussed above different from
the House File 277 that was just passed in the House and now
goes to the Senate?

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050217/NEWS10/502170416&SearchID=73200061601017

This article doesn't even mention any restrictions on
municipalities, but there seems to be quite a lot of
deregulation for the commercial telcos involved.  Which I'm
probably OK with.  Ah, here's the history on 277, with a link to
the text:

http://coolice.legis.state.ia.us/Cool-ICE/default.asp?Category=BillInfo&Service=DspHistory&var=HF&key=0301C

This bit about raising the bar so high for municipal projects
sounds like the telcos trying to protect what they see as
"their" turf.  Even though they have no more of a right to it
than do municipalities.  Ah, here's House Study Bill 109:

http://coolice.legis.state.ia.us/Cool-ICE/default.asp?category=billinfo&Service=Billbook&menu=text&hbill=HSB109

I heard a pitch from an OpportunityIowa.org/Fiberutilities.com
person this summer, and he warned that the telcos had been
trying to get this kind of legislation introduced over the last
few years, and would likely do so again.  I was skeptical of the
OI pitch, and still am.  One thing that disappointed me was the
extent to which they underplay the fact that there is already a
good deal of high-speed municipality telco action out there. 
Some of it is fiber-to-the-premises.  Some of it is fiber to the
neighborhood, with very high speed DSL copper covering the last
block.  BUT, while it doesn't reflect well on OI to not mention
these examples of communities that have pulled this off without
their help, it *especially* puts in a bad light the telcos
attempts to all but close the door on further municipality
involvement in telco infrastructure.

Ames is probably one of the better medium-sized markets for high
speed services--after all, what could be better than having the
housing of a lot of bandwidth-hungry university students
"outsourced" to the community at large for shoring up demand? 
You can't turn around without seeing a "for rent, free high
speed internent" sign.  

Yet there are large stretches of neighborhoods where there is
little to no competition for high speed service, where cable is
nearly the only option, because the ILEC multiplexed (?) their
installation in those neighborhoods.  I understand this is
similar to the situation in some West Des Moines neighborhoods.

The ramification of this starts to hit home in a LUG context:
Can you offer services over your connection?  At similar price
points, with DSL you can, with cable you cannot (or you can, but
it's against the ToS and so you take your chances).

-- 
D. Joe Anderson        http://www.etrumeus.com/~deejoe
deejoe@raccoon.com     deejoe@etrumeus.com
You're free. Now go help the others.