Municipalities, States Wield Surprising Power in U.S. Broadband Future, NATOA Panelists Say

"There are a lot of tools at your disposal, I think, to create this new future,” Google’s Motorola Mobility Vice President Rick Whitt said. NATOA members should realize they “have more power than has been the presumption to this point,” he said. The conventional wisdom is bogus in this regard, he argued. He pointed to the issues of poles, conduits, rights of way, zoning and all the public-private partnerships as well as government dark fiber that can be lit. These elements give communities leverage in regards to industry, he said.

Three trends will dictate what happens between 2013 and 2015, predicted Blair Levin, Gig. U executive director and former director of the FCC’s National Broadband Plan. The wireline networks likely won’t be upgraded any more, he said. Telcos don’t have any plans they've disclosed to improve these traditional networks, and they “have no one on Wall Street urging them to do so,” he said. The second big trend is the move toward Wi-Fi as the dominant network for traffic, he said. “The third big trend is the rewriting of the social contract,” he said, referring to the “fundamental market assumptions” disappearing. Historically there was the assumption of telecom monopolies and, in accord with that, institutionalized consumer protections, but technology and new competition have changed that paradigm, he said. Consumer advocates have worried about how this shift away from copper will cause problems (CD Sept 13 p11). Rewriting the social contract has manifested in various ways, such as California’s pending bill prohibiting much state regulation of VoIP, he said. Levin compared these trends to rivers that will meet over the next three years, and described NATOA’s coming role as “extremely important” along with the role of local governments overall.

The Google Fiber project of Kansas City can’t be replicated everywhere, said Levin. He disputed the notion that Kansas City’s openness would work for everyone: “The incumbents are not that interested because the equation still doesn’t work,” he said. The Kansas City prospect worked due to the specific partnership the city was willing to make beyond passive deregulation, Whitt said. He had worked for Google during the selection process and has still closely followed the fiber effort, he said. The company wanted to partner with the local community to facilitate the permitting processes and other procedural elements “that are a huge cost component for the company,” he said. This cooperation removed months of delay, according to Whitt. Kansas City’s willingness was a leading factor in its selection for the project, he said. “We will expose what people can do” with speeds of 1 Gbps in launching Google Fiber, said Google Chief Internet Evangelist Vinton Cerf. People rarely want to go back to lower speeds once they've experienced higher, Cerf added.

U.S. Ignite Executive Director Susan Spradley encouraged people to not let their member of Congress get “lazy” or “uneducated” about the possibilities of broadband and bandwidth, and fight for fiber projects and investment when appropriate. She emphasized the value of broadband transmission speeds 1 Gbps or above for the future. “We're coming up with application tool kits in nine starter communities,” she said. Levin compared fiber upgrades to a community’s past fight to get an airport or train depot, which communities would fight for if they wanted to also accept the costs of the process.

"Over the next 5 to 10 years, it'll be all about LTE,” Whitt said of wireless spectrum. Despite recent trends, the wired networks will still have the “clear advantage” for the “foreseeable future,” he said. He suspects mobile broadband will be more of a supplement than a competitor to fixed broadband, he said.