Columnist Andy Serwer asks why the sudden interest in municipal wireless: He points out in brief that there's a lot of debate over the role of cities in providing certain kinds of services, and whether Internet access should fall inside that role or not.
But this is the money quote for me, because it shows how out of touch the incumbents are: Walter McCormick, head of the United States Telecom Association, a trade group, says government-owned networks could be considered "un-American" if the public sector gives itself advantages over private-sector competitors, and he argues that they are "questionable at a time when essential services, police, and firefighters are subject to budget restraints."
Oddly, virtually every proposal I've seen since Philadelphia's for large cities offset all risk to the private entity that gets the winning "bid." Winning the bid means getting certain access to city or town facilities at what might be superior terms to walk-up customers: poles, towers, building tops, and conduits are expensive, and the city simply streamlining the process of gaining access is a franchise and highly valuable.
McCormick's statement doesn't work for Philadelphia where EarthLink is paying the entire cost of the network, and the city will give EarthLink a few million a year (via Wireless Philadelphia) for telecom and data services now paid to incumbents and others, consolidating and conserving cost. SF, likewise, if it accepts Google or a few other plans will put no money down, no money later to get a network. Portland, Oregon, and Minneapolis, to name two, seem to require the private bidders to assume full financing and risk in exchange for city telecom business.
Further, not all cities have horrible budgets, and incumbents aren't the best folks as multistate corporations with shareholders whose interests they serve to decide on the actions of individual towns and cities which have elected officials serving at the pleasure of their actual constituents.
My city, Seattle, has a $55 million budget surplus, just by the way.