There's more to municipal broadband than public funding, says report

US communities looking for faster broadband service than incumbent Internet service providers provide have alternatives to the increasingly controversial choice of seeking to publicly fund a network, according to a new handbook for city officials. Public funding of broadband is just one of several possibilities, according to “The Next Generation Connectivity Handbook: a Guide for Community Leaders Seeking Affordable Abundant Bandwidth,” released July 21 by Gig.U, a coalition of universities focused on building high-speed broadband networks, and the Benton Foundation, an advocacy group focused on media and telecommunication issues.

Most city officials say that their local broadband networks aren’t good enough in the long term, according to the report, which advises that “the time to begin thinking about faster speeds, more competition and better service is now. Network upgrades do not happen overnight.” When Gig.U launched in 2011, “there was no map for communities that wanted to accelerate next-generation network deployment,” said Blair Levin, Gig.U’s executive director. The new guidelines aim to fill that gap. “Nearly every community we worked with saw public money as a last resort, when no other options for next generation networks were available,” Levin said. “But our group view was that the decision should be made by the local community.”