Dear California Legislator,
In order to maintain and extend its technological pre-eminence, California needs a telecommunications infrastructure second-to-none. One way to facilitate that state of affairs is to allow California's cities and counties to design, build, and operate municipal wireless broadband Internet access networks that rely on combinations of fiber-optic and wireless technologies, including both Wi-Fi and WiMax.
The City of Philadelphia intends to do that, but the telecom giant Verizon saw to it that the Pennsylvania Legislature recently passed a bill ("House Bill 30") to outlaw such public efforts on behalf of the public ("When muni-broadband is outlawed, only muni-outlaws will have broadband.") In a last-minute side deal, Verizon waived its right to pre-empt Philadelphia's broadband wireless network, but didn't do so in the case of cities in the rest of the commonwealth.
To avoid such a disaster in California, I believe it would be appropriate for the California State Legislature to pass a law establishing, confirming, and protecting the right of California's cites, counties, and other districts to design, build, and operate broadband wireless Internet access networks, whether for their own internal use and/or for the use of all comers, be they businesses, non-profit organizations, or individuals, either for no charge or for compensation.
To provide you with some background on this subject, I've assembled links to some of the articles that have appeared on various web sites published by Etopia Media News Networks which may be useful to you in your efforts to understand and pro-actively respond to the important challenge soon to be posed in California by an unholy alliance of telcos and cable companies to throttle in its cradle the nascent movement towards municipal broadband design and deployment.
The Philadelphia (muni-broadband) Story
11-6-04: Aiirmesh brings community-based broadband wireless Internet access to the San Fernando Valley, starting in Van Nuys
11-10-04: Tony Esfandiari, CEO of Aiirmesh Communications, discusses its broadband wireless Internet deployment in Van Nuys
11-10-04: Bert Williams, V.P. Marketing at Tropos Networks, talks about the new Pershing Square "hot zone" in Downtown Los Angeles
11-11-04: Rich Grimes, EVP at Wireless Capital Partners, member of LA's Broadband Executive Panel, discusses unwiring Los Angeles
11-13-04: Todd Richmond, Managing Director of the Annenberg Center for Communication, member of LA's Broadband Executive Panel, discusses unwiring Los Angeles
11-16-04: Rajit Gadh, Director of WINMEC and a member of the LA Broadband Executive Panel, discusses unwiring Los Angeles
11-17-04: Morley Winograd, executive director of the Center for Telecom Management at USC and the chair of the Executive Broadband Panel, discusses the unwiring of Los Angeles
11-18-04: Thera Bradshaw, general manager of the City of Los Angeles' Information Technology Agency (ITA) and a member of LA's Broadband Executive Panel (BEP) discusses unwiring LA
11-18-04: Jim Allison, senior planner with the Capitol Corridor Joint Powers Authority (CCJPA), discusses unwiring Amtrak
11-22-04: Doane Liu, Los Angeles Deputy Mayor, says that incumbent cable and telephone companies will not have a "veto" over recommendations of Mayor Hahn's Broadband Executive Panel on the Unwiring of LA
from Broadband over Power Line,
another way to provide broadband Internet access, well-suited for cities with publicly-owned electric utilities
11-19-04: Introduction to Broadband over Power Line World™
11-30-04: Brett Kilbourne, United Power Line Council official, discusses broadband over power line
12-6-04: Michael Bates, V.P., Sales and Marketing at Broadband Horizons, broadband over power line pioneer, discusses its BPL roll-out in Texas
12-7-04: Unlike PG&E and SCE, San Diego Gas & Electric will admit that it is "looking into" broadband over power line (BPL)
12-9-04: Rep. Phil King, chairman of the Texas Legislature's Regulated Industries Committee, discusses a broad range of broadband issues, including BPL in Texas
12-10-04: Marvin Bloomquist, speaking for ham radio operators in Burnet, Texas, finds some fault with the deployment and the deployers of broadband over power line in his community
The culmination of all this is a plan for an integrated universal ubiquitous statewide system of Internet connectivity called "Broadband California," which you might want to investigate
12-4-04: "Digital Common Sense"
Legalizing (or even underwriting with $3 billion in general revenue bond and/or otherwise facilitating at the state level) the creation of a series of Cali-Muni-Wireless/Integrated Broadband Internet Access Networks would also pave the way for linking them (with fiber, microwave, or WiMax backhaul/links) into a state-wide system, the "Broadband California" network referred to in the "Digital Common Sense" article linked to above.
Building the Broadband California system would provide a platform for offering voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) and Video-over-Internet Protocol (VidIP) services as well as a means of connecting to mobile cellular networks. The entire network would be available to all comers on an unbundled basis, allowing private companies as well as cooperatives, municipalities, non-profits, and individuals to use it for themselves or to use it to offer value-added services to other people and organizations.
The California Broadband network could also offer incentives to its users to allow their individual and group computing resources (the "Extra Cycles" program) to be aggregated through grid technology (see the
Grid World web site) to provide another powerful digital engine to drive various industries and projects within (and outside) the state, including especially the compute intensive bio-medical sector, and its current darling, stem cell research (see more about that at these web sites:
Stem Cells #1,
Stem Cells #2,
Stem Cells #3,
Stem Cells #4, and
Stem Cells #5).
Building Broadband California will also be a boon for local and state-wide e-government (including the on-line publication of legal notices), telecommuting, distance learning, telemedicine, and, not least, real Internet voting, along the lines recently proven out by the long-term democrats and solid citizens of Geneva, Switzerland (see the details at:
"Internet Voting in Geneva").
Doing all this will do no more than implement some modest suggestions from a lone candidate, running with no budget but with a computer and an Internet connection, for Mayor of (the still non-existent San Fernando) Valley City in 2002. You can hear what he had to say then, now, by clicking
here.
Regards,
Marc Strassman
Pro-active Reporter
("If you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own"—
"Scoop" Nisker)
Etopia Media News Network
State Coordinator
Broadband California
Take a poll about the right of cities to offer wireless broadband Internet access to their residents by clicking
here.
Join the "Broadband California™" mailing list (unless you're already on another Etopia Media mailing list)
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