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from: Callahan's Diary

Lev Gonick: SB 117 vs. I-Nets

A very important point yesterday at Bytes From Lev:

Missing from almost all the analysis is the single most important part of existing franchise agreements and those are the provisions that relate to so-called I-Nets (Institutional Networks). In the first round of franchise agreements with Cable providers, the City template franchise agreement for providing rights to lay out fiber included a public set-a-side of 6 or more fiber pairs to be used to connect public institutions like schools, government buildings, public health care services, and other public institutions. The provision was slightly ahead of its time but in the past 10 years or so, enlightened Cities (and Counties) are significantly leveraging their negotiated rights to use I-Net infrastructure.

The current language in Bill 117 is entirely silent on the right of the State or any local jurisdiction to conclude a franchise agreement that will provide public set aside access of fiber pairs to enable communities and their elected officials to use fiber to create connected communities around the country. Make no mistake about it, while cities like Cleveland and Dayton stand to loose $250,000 per year or so through certain changes in the proposed formulas for the franchise agreements, the real economic loss will come from giving up the provisioning of I-Nets as part of the entitlement of cities and the State of Ohio. The long term impact will be measured in hundreds of millions of dollars not to mention public capacity to participate in framing a public agenda for public benefit in the Internet Age.

…Looking back 20 years from now, a decision to miss bringing forward the provisions of I-Nets will be seen by future pundits as the key legislative miss (while cable television will likely be a largely irrelevant issue). While Europe, Asia, and many other countries in Latin America, Canada, and elsewhere are leveraging public access to fiber to position their countries to be leaders in the emerging Internet Age, U.S. and Ohio legislators are losing the opportunity to leverage legislative authority in the public interest.

Unfortunately, Lev is in error about SB 117 being “silent” on this issue (but that only makes his point more important). Here’s Section 1332.30 (B):

No municipal corporation or township shall require a video service provider to provide any institutional network or equivalent capacity on its video service network.

I hope Lev is planning to submit testimony. It would be nice if the Energy and Public Utilities Committee got to hear from an actual recognized expert on the future of networks.