: Opening Market">
Kutztown is a triumph of free enterprise inspired by municipal involvement. Lets take a look at the outcomes of Kutztowns program:
By introducing a municipal service to the competitive mix, the borough expanded the number of choices available to consumers, held their costs and provided an incentive to private carriers to enhance their offerings to better compete for customers.
In the debate over municipal broadband, its a model that defies the extremes on both sides of the debate. It just works and works well.
Now, HB 30 has effectively given veto power on municipal efforts to the very carriers that neglected Kutztown all along.
Click here to read about Verizon Wireless extending its 3G network.
The last chapter of the municipal broadband story, of which municipal wireless is but a chapter, wont be written across the country for quite some time. But the book in Pennsylvania closes in 2006, when munis that havent implemented a plan will relinquish the right to do so to Verizon, the incumbent carrier.
To its credit, Verizon is now pursuing an aggressive broadband build-out thats finally begun to reach out to smaller communities, and its heavily touting that effort in news releases that announce DSL services coming online in some small community or another.
But there is a limit to how quickly one provider can move and how much of its budget one provider is willing to allocate toward the effort. And the operative phrase here, of course, is "one provider." With legislation such as HB30, thats all we get.
For his part, Caruso said he thinks ownership of local broadband services is not the issue at all. "Its all about owning the customer," he told me. Those who wrote to disagree said it was all about open markets and competition. But I must say, Im still looking hard for anything that resembles competition in Pennsylvanias new law.
Check out eWEEK.coms for the latest news, reviews and analysis on mobile and wireless computing.
Enterprise Mobility News & Reviews 
