At the town council meeting tonight in Silver City, Councilor Gary Clauss asked about the possibility of providing city-wide broadband to the community. It’s an ambitious idea for a town the size of Silver City – most municipalities to date with citywide Wi-Fi plans have been much, much larger (i.e. San Francisco and Philadelphia).
Still, it is becoming increasingly apparent that Internet access is a bottleneck for expanding education and creating employment opportunities. Many argue convincingly that ‘Net access, in this day in age, is like education, water and waste removal: an essential service that should be provided by communities.
Indeed, look at Rio Rancho. Sure, they have Intel to help them out, but they would also have a much larger subscriber base. Start with this eWeek article from October 2004:
The city has worked out a license agreement with Ottawa Wireless that resembles a cable television franchise in some ways. The city gives Ottawa Wireless access to public right of way. In return, Ottawa Wireless will pay a fee for being allowed to operate in the city. Palenick said that the fee is 3 percent of the gross after the company receives $100,000 gross per month. That fee goes up to 5 percent for revenues between $300,000 and $500,000. Once monthly revenues reach $500,000, the fee goes to 7 percent.
Van Houwelingen said that he expects his company to start seeing significant revenues early on. He noted that the basic rate for a fixed wireless installation would be $19.95 per month for access speeds of 256K bps. A mobile wireless user would pay $5 more per month. Higher speeds are available at higher rates.
Now, check the transition to March 2006:
It’s not 100 percent official yet, but if the city council of Rio Rancho, New Mexico votes as expected tomorrow night, that municipality will soon offer citywide Wi-Fi Internet access to every resident and visitor for free.
Azulstar Networks of Grand Haven, Michigan is the provider of the Rio Rancho network (as well as a few in its home state). Up until this point, the company was charging for wireless Internet access with different tiers of service ranging from 256 Kilobits per second (Kbps) up to 1.5 Megabits (Mbps). If the vote goes through, however, anyone can go online in the city for free, though limited to a 100Kbps download data rate — and only for 10 hours per month, with $1.50 per minute charges for tech support.
That’s right, free wireless access. The provider has a portal that users must pass through when connecting, and they generate revenue from advertising sales on that portal. Meanwhile, the residents get free broadband.
I truly hope Clauss will follow up on this, and other city officials as well. This is the type of progressive, economic development measure that most everybody can get behind. I’m crossing my fingers.
Steve London
Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t SignalPeak already offer reasonably-priced wireless broadband serving most of Silver City ? For those that can’t afford SignalPeak’s $45/month, there are plenty of dial-up providers serving Silver City starting at $10/month. In addition, there are numerous free wireless hotspots around town, as well as free public internet access at WNMU’s Miller Library and the Silver City library. Sorry, I don’t see the current internet access situation in Silver City as any impediment to economic development.
Meanwhile, look at the situation for those of us living in eastern Grant County – Santa Rita, San Lorenzo, Mimbres, Lake Roberts. We’re held hostage by the Western New Mexico Telephone Company/Western Interactive/Gilanet monopoly. Since we’re not a local call to Silver City, we have only one dial-up internet service provider (Western Interactive/Gilanet), at $26/month. DSL was just introduced to a “lucky” few living near the telephone company central office, for $65/month (WNM telephone company + Gilanet fee). The only other option is pricey satellite internet service ($500 up-front + $60/month).
Avelino Maestas
Steve,
I think you’re right, but still feel it is a worty endeavor for Silver City to pursue. I’ll admit that I am less familiar with the options for those outside of S.C., and I appreciate you taking the time to bring those to light.
I just did a Google search on rural broadband, and discovered http://www.ruralbroadbandcoalition.net/ is the first link. Straight from their site, they espouse many of the things I mentioned in my post:
Competition and active participation in today’s vigorous new economy requires not only a computer, but also high-speed, high-capacity (broadband) access to information and data on the Internet. While the Internet is changing the world economy, technology experts say, “large parts of rural America are losing out on jobs, economic development and civic participation” because of inadequate access to the Internet. Traversing vast expanses of remote and often rugged topography presents unique financial and technological barriers.
RBC believes that broadband will soon be considered as essential as “traditional” utility services. Recognizing this, RBC sees a parallel with rural electrification programs of the 1930’s, and considers governmental organizations and industry to have a significant role to play in bridging the “digital divide” by bringing broadband to rural and underserved areas.
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That’s exactly what I’m talking about. I’ll do some more research into the situation, but this site looks like a great first resource for Grant County residents such as you.
Kathleen Jackson
While he neglected to include DSL in his list of available services, Steve London most aptly pointed out that Silver City does not currently lack Internet access, including broadband. This access is available to everyone for reasonable cost. It therefore appears that the proposal is really to move Internet access service from the private sector to the public sector, and to change it from a commercial fee-based service to one that is (ostensibly) free.
Whether Internet access is an essential service, equivalent to water, power, heating and waste removal is certainly debatable. What is not debatable is that none of these other essential services is provided for free, and never has been. Why should this one be free?
A final comment: If this proposal (as I understand it) is implemented it will result in the obliteration of at least several local businesses, ones that currently provide Internet access to Silver City. I thought that we were attempting to grow local business, not destroy it.
Avelino Maestas
Kathleen,
From what I have seen of these programs in other municipalities, they provide only a basic level of service. Singal Peak and Qwest DSL would likely be unaffected, because most people who are currently subscribers have higher throughput and download speeds.
In addition, I don’t see why SignalPeak or Zianet could not be the partner the city uses to provide the access. That would be an incredible coup for a local (or New Mexico) business.