Public ownership is the answer

[SOURCE: The Minnesota Daily, AUTHOR: Becca Vargo Daggett, Municipal Telecommunications Project]
[Commentary] Students, small companies and struggling startups will be hurt if telephone and cable companies start charging content providers. But the solution is not to ask Congress to impose regulations enforcing network neutrality. The solution is to build publicly owned, open access networks as an alternative to the private, proprietary networks on which we currently rely. A publicly owned broadband network would not be a monopoly. Customers could still choose to continue to use the incumbent phone or cable company’s pipes, but they would have that choice. The smart money is on people gravitating toward publicly owned pipes, which allow them to choose how they use the Internet. This is why the incumbent phone and cable companies oppose municipal broadband. Cities have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create a competitive local market for broadband by building publicly owned networks. They should not waste it.
http://www.mndaily.com/articles/2006/02/02/66942