San Francisco Ponders The Largest Community Broadband Network Ever Built
from the if-you-build-it-they-will-come dept
Despite being considered one of the technology capitals of the country, San Francisco and the Bay Area continue to suffer from a lack of broadband options -- just like the rest of us sorry sods. If they're lucky, most locals there still only have the option of one of two large ISPs: AT&T and Comcast. Both companies have a long, proud history of fighting competition tooth and nail, often by quite literally writing shitty state telecom law that ensures the status quo remains intact. Attempts to break through this logjam and bring faster, better broadband service to the city have seen decidedly mixed results.
Like most areas, ultra-fast next-generation broadband in particular is notably lacking. Some estimates suggest that just 2.6% of San Francisco residents have access to gigabit broadband service. Sonic CEO Dane Jasper, whose company is also busy deploying gigabit services to the Bay Area, tells me he believes those figures are stale and gigabit penetration rates in the city are closer to 17%. And while Google Fiber had tinkered with the idea of bringing fiber to the city, the company's pivot to wireless has left that added avenue of competition up in the air.
Last week, numerous Mayors and city officials in California and Arizona penned a letter to AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, complaining that not only is AT&T not upgrading many DSL customers to fiber, they're not adequately maintaining existing copper (now that AT&T's primary focus appears to be media, and acquiring Time Warner):
"All too many Californians and Nevadans have waited far too long for AT&T to build the high-speed broadband infrastructure promised to them," the officials said in a letter to AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson. "Not only is AT&T failing to provide access to 21st-century high-speed connections to many communities, but it is also not maintaining the copper lines that are vital to landline phone access, 911 and emergency services and basic Internet service."
For most of the last fifteen years, bubbling under the surface of this dysfunction, a growing number of cities have decided to bypass broadband's duopoly and just build next-generation, citywide broadband networks from scratch. That effort received renewed attention this week in San Francisco when the city announced it was convening a panel of "business, privacy and academic experts" to debate and discuss just what such a network would look like. On that panel will be Harvard Law School Professor Susan Crawford, who has been consistently at the forefront of criticizing this country's broken broadband market.
The panel has been tasked with how best to build a network capable of delivering gigabit speeds at more reasonable prices:
In the coming months, the San Francisco Municipal Fiber Blue Ribbon Panel will conduct research and provide recommendations on the most efficient and effective ways to blanket the city with broadband, an effort that could cost up to $1 billion.
If it becomes reality, San Francisco would be the largest city in the country to implement citywide high-speed Internet. City officials are currently targeting speeds of 1 gigabit per second. The average Internet speed in the U.S. is 31 megabits per second according to the most recent data published by the Federal Communications Commission, so this could be about 30 times faster.
The problem is convincing people to pay for it. Seattle has spent the better part of the last fifteen years pondering its own network after being historically disappointed by ISPs like Comcast and CenturyLink. But locals have consistently shied away from funding such a massive project -- especially given the city's current focus on shoring up mass transit ahead of an ongoing population boom. Incumbent ISP lobbying also consistently tangles these efforts with disinformation and legal shenanigans, usually adding additional costs as the cities have to deal with lawsuits and other pay-to-play regulatory headaches.
We've long noted how while municipal broadband is often demonized, it's a perfectly organic reaction to market failure -- and if companies truly want to keep towns and cities from getting into the broadband business, the solution should be fairly obvious: provide better, cheaper broadband.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: munibroadband, municipal broadband, san francisco
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
They'll have broadband but no home to put it in
So the question I have is this, will it help citizens or business. To answer my own question, it will help business.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: They'll have broadband but no home to put it in
http://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/panicking-seattle-home-buyers-spooked-by-risi ng-interest-rates-rush-to-buy/
http://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/seattle-chugs-along-a s-americas-hottest-home-market-despite-slowing-a-bit/
http://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estat e/seattle-keeps-crown-as-nations-hottest-housing-market-for-2nd-straight-month/
Doing NOTHING certainly helps Big Telecom.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: They'll have broadband but no home to put it in
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: They'll have broadband but no home to put it in
A decent internet connection, being almost a necessity now, shouldn't be considered entirely separate from housing affordability. At least we have some idea how to solve the internet problem—we can hardly fall back on the standard "America is too rural" trope when talking about rewiring San Francisco.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: They'll have broadband but no home to put it in
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Wow, shocking, join the club Seattle.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
It looks like one of those nice sink holes where government officials can shovel a ton of money to build something, and then shovel a whole bunch money every year to maintain. Perhaps they can even create a "municipal broadband office" with a bunch of political toadies getting nice jobs with big salaries and huge retirement payouts as rewards for sucking up at election time.
San Fran and the area have huge issues with a lack of affordable housing, and zoning bylaws which discourage anyone doing anything about it. In any other same marketplace, there would a be turn towards multi unit buildings to satisfy demands. Instead, what you get (because of a lack of incentive to build or convert) is people live multiples to a single story home.
Broadband is nice, but it's not a "first on the list" thing for an area that has huge and obvious problems in taking care of it's citizens.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
The city isn't taking care of its citizens because it's not taking in enough money to care for them with because the rich don't want to pay their share of taxes for services they don't use, e.g. public housing. It's a revenue problem.
Both of these problems are due to scare-mongering over the S-word. Socialism. Stop scare-mongering over that and watch the situation change.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Well, now that marijuana is legal in California, we can use some of that tax money to fund this. Just look at Colorado. They made so much on taxes, they actually had to give some back to the residents...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Of course, the states might get together and decide that they all want some of that tax action and force Congress to change federal law. One can only hope.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
a simple question ...
A hundred years? A thousand?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: a simple question ...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Blue Ribbon Competition
Meanwhile, the joint AT&T/Comcast Munificent Blue Ribbon panel is conducting research and providing recommendations on how to spend up to $2 billion blanketing Sacramento with legions of lobbyists.
After all, these benevolent corporations must protect the helpless citizens of California from evil government overreach.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Didnt?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Didnt?
Prime example of why NO company should ever be allowed to write legislation.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
SF Broadband
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
SF muni network
They'll consider "private development" or a "public-private partnership" for building the network. I see another big fat contract with the city in AT&T's future. http://www.policyworks.us/MuniFranchise.html
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Silly. The solution is to write worse laws. It's cheaper than upgrading the network.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Stop the Graft Machine
For years, AT&T, Comcast, et al. have promised infrastructural improvements without ever carrying through. In many instances, these promises were made to municipal and state governments in exchange for reduced taxes. Enforce the contract. Make them pay their back taxes. If they refuse, condemn and seize the local assets and lease them to a new provider or take them over as a municipal service.
Stop letting these thieving corporations and their politician lackeys line their pockets at our expense and inconvenience.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
https://www.sonic.com/gigabit
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
SF FTTH
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The State of Brotherly Love
Aw, nice of those Arizonans to be concerned for their northwestern neighbors...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Yeah, that's Washington's own stupid fault. I lived south of Tacoma from '72 to '97 and NEVER was the Seattle/Tacoma area ahead of the curve when it came to preparing for the populating needing to get from one place to another. And even when they did do something about it, it took FOREVER to complete anything. One rain drop and "Oh, we can't work!" Traffic problems were one of the big reasons Boeing moved their headquarters out of south Seattle. A lot of Boeing workers lived in Gig Harbor, which is on the other side of Tacoma from Seattle, so that whole I-5/SR-16 corridor was a big clogged up mess that took forever to get through. Too little, too late.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
AT&T/Comcast Munificent Blue Ribbon panel
[ link to this | view in chronology ]