Baltimore broadband offers huge potential

[Commentary] Sen. Catherine Pugh's commentary, "Municipal broadband's false promise" (Aug. 16), is flawed by many serious errors and omissions. Whoever is advising her on this issue is doing her and the people of Baltimore a disservice.

Senator Pugh claims that municipalities "keep building expensive networks that fail to attract customers." In fact, the national average take rate of public fiber networks (39 percent) is virtually indistinguishable from that of companies such as Verizon and AT&T (40 percent). She also contends that a "long pantheon" of municipal projects have failed. I don't agree with her. While the private sector is now making low-bandwidth broadband services more widely available, municipalities today are focusing on high-end networks that can simultaneously support robust economic development, lifetime educational and occupational opportunities, affordable access to modern health care, intelligent transportation systems, and much more. Yes, this is more challenging, but it also offers tremendous opportunities both for communities and for America's global competitiveness.

[The writer is president of the Baller Herbst Law Group and has been involved in more than 50 fiber projects across the United States.]