Broadband is better as a public-private partnership

[Commentary] Waiting for the incumbent Internet service providers to do something on their own or even providing substantial incentives to motivate them is not working. There must be a better way. A simple solution is to encourage municipalities to build out this so-called “last-mile” connection to individual homes and businesses by installing publicly owned fiber. This “dark fiber” would not necessarily have any service on it provided by the municipality. Instead, it would function as a “road” to one or more centralized publicly owned “meet-me” locations.

This model addresses many of the concerns with municipal broadband -- such as a lack of choice and poor customer service, or concerns about filtering, privacy and tracking -- while retaining the true need and competitive advantage of offering very high-speed connections critical to future growth and prosperity. By separating the true infrastructure from the services that can ride on top of it we have, in effect, created something much more analogous to the road network that is provided publicly but utilized by many people and businesses in many different ways.

[Ben Franske, Ph.D., is a Professor of Information Technology and Security at Inver Hills Community College]