How Can America’s Communities Secure the Benefits of Fiber-Optic Infrastructure?

How can America’s communities secure the benefits of fiber-optic infrastructure? Our answer is that local governments need not accept a binary option of waiting for the private sector to solve the problem—which the private sector already would have done if it made business sense—or taking on the challenge entirely as a public enterprise. Rather, public-private collaboration can disrupt this binary and give communities options. Indeed, in recent months and years, a range of collaborative public-private models—involving various levels of risk-sharing—have emerged and proved worthy of emulation. In some of the most promising of these partnerships, the public entity funds, builds, and owns the underlying communications infrastructure and the private entity does the rest: It provides the electronics and service over that infrastructure and deals with the complexities of running a broadband business. This Public Infrastructure/Private Service model puts the locality in the business of building infrastructure, a business cities and counties know well after a century of building roads, bridges, and utilities. The model leaves to the private sector most aspects of network operations, equipment provisioning, and service delivery.

A new paper—authored by the Coalition For Local Internet Choice (CLIC) and published by the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society—defines and describes the model (and related variations, such as private-private and public-public) from both a business and a technical standpoint, and it summarizes case studies across the country of partnerships solving problems today. We provide a strategic overview of the basic Public Infrastructure/Private Service model and its variants, together with a framework for public-sector entities to consider as they evaluate potential technical approaches and levels of risk-sharing. And we address the key legal issues that arise in public-private partnership deals.

[Joanne Hovis is president of CTC Technology & Energy. Jim Baller is president of Baller Stokes & Lide, PC, a national law firm. David Talbot, Principal Analyst & Researcher at CTC Technology & Energy, is an experienced researcher and analyst who conducts a range of analytical, research, and needs assessment tasks. Cat Blake, Civic Technology Analyst at CTC Technology & Energy, works with clients to develop infrastructure and funding strategies to meet community needs and performs a range of research and writing tasks related to civic technology and digital equity.]