Portland's broadband plan lacks urgency and funding priority

Yesterday Portland’s City Council passed a broadband plan but did not give developing broadband much priority for funding. To me, developing widely, and cheaply, accessible high-speed internet is an essential infrastructure component of a dynamic, economically competitive city. Portland needs to do more and do it faster.

From the Oregonian article “Portland City Council approves ‘prudent’ broadband plan” by Mike Rogoway (here):.

Portland commissioners voted 4-0 this afternoon (Mayor Sam Adams is in New York) to approve a broad plan for boosting Internet speeds and making Web access more affordable.

The plan, conceived over several months this year, shies away from grand ambitions like a publicly sponsored fiber network to residents' homes. Instead, the city promotes collaboration with industry leaders and suggest Portland use existing resources to extend broadband's reach.

"This is a prudent plan for tough times," Commissioner Amanda Fritz said, acknowledging that community and tech activists sought more ambitious goals.

"We don't have the money for that right now," she said.

In an earlier article, Rogoway wrote (here):

Last time Portland took a close look at its broadband needs, city staffers conceived a massive fiber-optic network connecting every home to hyper-fast Internet access.

Portland commissioners scrapped that ambitious plan in 2007 after they got a look at the project's price tag: Half a billion dollars.

Four years later, the city has crafted a new plan that puts a high priority on faster Web access but makes no commitments -- financial or otherwise.

As a result, the new plan is all but certain to win City Council approval Wednesday afternoon (2 p.m. in council chambers). But it's much less clear that it will accomplish anything.

Commissioner Dan Saltzman oversees Portland's Office of Cable & Franchise Management, which crafted the plan. This time out, Saltzman said, the city wants to marshal private resources, even if it takes a while for changes to take hold.

"This approach right now is a much more collaborative approach," Saltzman said, "working with CenturyLink, Comcast, Integra (Telecom) and others." 

There is dissent, again from Rogoway’s second article:

Grass-roots Internet activists, though, are less enthusiastic.

"The plan's action items have always seemed way too timid for me," said Russell Senior, president of the volunteer nonprofit Personal Telco Project, which builds free wireless Internet access nodes around Portland.

The companies serving Portland aren't doing enough to increase speeds, according to Senior, and have a financial incentive to keep rates high. So he said he'd like Portland to try a publicly sponsored network in a portion of the city and evaluate the results.

"To me," he said, "the only real solution is for local governments to essentially create privately owned infrastructure."

The plan itself does state well the significance of broadband development. From its executive summary (here):

Broadband networks power access to global information, economic activity and politics in the same way that highways provided the transportation corridors for the old economy. Broadband is about keeping Portland competitive so that our workforce can continually innovate locally and collaborate globally. Just as electricity fundamentally and forever changed our society and economy in unanticipated and disruptive ways, the interconnected web of “the Network” is transforming our ability to participate, educate, inform and compete. A shortage of broadband capacity will cause Portland to lose ground in its economic future. So it is important for us to learn what the Network is and how it impacts society. We must proactively set a strategic course for our economic and social development. This Plan will inform other planning efforts at the City. The Broadband Plan lays the foundation for understanding, embracing and adapting to the digital economy. The Portland Broadband Strategic Plan is one of the fi rst local government efforts in the nation to address the linkages between broadband and our local economy, sustainability and the environment, our educational and governmental institutions and our policies and industry responses. We recognize that the Network—and all of the technologies represented under the umbrella concept of the Network, are disruptive and game changing for society as a whole, and for the sustainability of our local economy and quality of life. Our plan recognizes that Broadband is Critical Infrastructure. The Network has become integral to both the working and personal lives of most households, families and businesses. The majority  of job listings are online, education (K-12 and higher ed) has rapidly been moving online, economic development and jobs are demonstrably related to adequate broadband capacity to recruit and retain businesses in our community, critical health care functionality is rapidly moving online, e-commerce and home-based businesses need this critical access, and Portland’s culture and policies promoting sustainability have a critical delivery element that has a strong correlation to adequate broadband infrastructure. This plan identifies strategies for developing our new economy in the broadband era, and defines our values for planning a safe, sustainable and equitable future with technology as a pervasive force in our environment.

 Relating to schools, the executive summary also says:

Getting a quality education in the 21st century increasingly depends on Internet access.

Modern K-12 education methods and goals depend on students and families having access to the Internet.

I agree, but public schools in the city of Portland are doing too little too slowly to use online education to expand learning opportunities and reduce costs.

Both the City of Portland and its public schools need to up their broadband game. I’m not an internet techie. I don’t know the specifics on what should be done. But I do understand the dynamics of the global economy, and, if Portland cannot do better, we will fall behind. This plan is not good enough. There needs to be more urgency and a higher priority for broadband development and use. We live in a very competitive global economy. We need to give broadband development a very high priority.

Comments

[replica oakley sunglasses]

http://www.replicaoakleyssunglass.com
I’m always excited to visit this blog in the evenings.Please keep on churning out the content. It’s very entertaining.