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Carol Wilson: “Munis Hit Back at Heartland”

A Heartland Institute study challenging the financial viability of municipal broadband networks is rife with “mistakes, misinterpretations, unsupported and insupportable claims, irrelevancies, innuendos, key omissions and obvious untruths,” according to Jim Baller of The Baller Herbst Law Group, the attorney for both of the municipal networks profiled in the study.

Lafayette responds to second Heartland Institute paper

In its latest “study” entitled Municipal Broadband: Optimistic Plan, Disappointing Reality (June 20, 2005), the Heartland Institute attempts to achieve two purposes simultaneously: (1) attack the municipal fiber project in Bristol, Virginia, and (2) use its criticism of the Bristol system to undermine the Lafayette fiber project. Heartland’s paper contains so many mistakes, misinterpretations, unsupported and insupportable claims, irrelevancies, innuendos, key omissions, and obvious untruths in Heartland’s latest harangue against municipal broadband that it would take a paper many times the length of this one to respond to them all.

Deceptive Myths About Municipal Broadband

By Jim Baller

In October and November of 1906, when electrification was the must-have new technology of the era, Moody’s Magazine invited the leading advocates and opponents of municipal electric utilities to write chapters for a special issue. The opponents contributed the following chapters: “Municipal Ownership Costly and Dangerous,” “Municipal Ownership a Delusion,” “Municipal Ownership Uneconomic,” “Why Municipal Service is Expensive,” and “Municipal Ownership Always a Failure.”

With the benefit of hindsight, we know that everyone on of these claims was wrong.

Seattle Task Force Report

The Internet has sparked a communications revolution that will accelerate as advanced voice, data and video services emerge. Interactive, high-speed broadband networks with the capacity to deliver next-generation applications will become essential to businesses, schools, health care providers, government and individuals. Such a network is not available to most of Seattle today. If Seattle is to compete in the new world of enhanced communications, it must have an affordable, open, universally available, state-of-the-art broadband network.

Lafayette responds to first Heartland Institute paper

Heartland makes five main arguments against public FTTH systems: (1) there is no need for municipal entry because robust competition exists among private-sector broadband providers, which are currently meeting, and will continue to meet, America’s broadband needs; (2) there is no evidence that municipal investments in broadband technology lead to faster economic growth
or higher personal incomes; (3) the private sector is more efficient that the public sector; (4) municipal projects typically encounter higher than expected costs and large operating losses borne by taxpayers; and (5) municipal broadband networks are very risky ventures. None of these contentions holds up under analysis.

Broadband and Economic Development: A Municipal Case Study From Florida

In this paper, George S. Ford and Thomas M. Koutsy explore whether broadband investment by municipalities has an effect on economic growth. To do so, they employ an econometric model to compare economic growth in Lake County, Florida, with other similar Florida counties. In 2001, Lake County – a small county in central Florida – began generally offering private businesses and municipal institutions access to one of Florida’s most extensive, municipally-owned broadband networks, with fiber optic connections to hospitals, doctor offices, private businesses, and 44 schools. Lake County has experienced approximately 100% greater growth in economic activity – a doubling – relative to comparable Florida counties since making its municipal broadband network generally available to businesses and municipal institutions in the county.

Economist John Kelly responds to Rizzutto and Wirth

This paper provides evidence that municipally owned and operated cable television enterprises are financially viable and provide large rate savings to their communities. The findings contradict allegations in Costs, Benefits, and Long-Term Sustainability of Municipal Cable TelevisionOverbuilds, a 1998 paper authored by Ronald J. Rizzuto and Michael O. Wirth, that such enterprises are likely to be poor investments for cities.