Both local corporate newspapers, neither of which have RSS feeds or any sort of community citizen journalism initiative, are reporting that the Saint Paul City Council is considering ways to bring a municipal wireless system to the city.
Jackie Crosby’s piece in the Minneapolis StarTribune had the best quote:
“‘The Internet is kind of like a public street,’ said Council Member Dave Thune. ‘Just like we don’t have only toll roads, maybe there should be some kind of basic access where the public can get the benefit of the Internet regardless of how much money they have and regardless of where they are located.’”
Last fall, Minneapolis suburb Chaska began offering access to a municipal wireless network for US$16 per month and, according to Crosby’s report, Minneapolis already “has a backbone in place for Wi-Fi and is in the early stages of setting up a functioning network.”
On the other side of the river, the Saint Paul Pioneer Press‘s Robert Ingrassia chose to focus on the question of whether or not city government should be in the internet access business. “St. Paul is joining a growing national debate about the role of government in providing Internet services,” Ingrassia writes. “The discussion pits those who view affordable Internet access as a public good worthy of government intervention against those who favor letting the marketplace dictate price, performance and availability.”
Council Member Thune made it clear that he’s not married to the idea of the city owning the business: “We don’t know what the end result will be, but we want to do everything possible to make the Internet affordable and available. Everything is on the table, from city ownership of a service to a nonprofit owning it.”
Ingrassia quotes a 2002 Commerce Department study indicating that existing broadband services will soon be inadequate:
“There is little debate that the nation’s Internet infrastructure is lacking. In 2002, the U.S. Commerce Department concluded that existing high-speed services, such as cable and DSL, may prove ‘woefully insufficient’ to meet future demands and that ‘today’s broadband will be tomorrow’s traffic jam.’”
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